The Hybrid Project
by TheChickenCrazy
Summary: The aftershock of the Aparoid invasion has left Corneria a dysfunctional wreck. Abominations flee the shadows of Venom in the tumult, sinister whispers pervading the system in their wake. Fox, haunted by his past, is sent careening into the dark alongside both friend and foe as Lylat faces a nightmarish turn of events. (R&R, if you please.)
1. Prologue, Part One

**Update:** Enthusiastically shameless in hoping for a bit more reception. Love it? Hate it? Does it interest you? Does it make you cringe? Let me know. Drop a review, if you would be so wonderful.

 **Warning.** I believe there will be quite a bit of "trigger" content in this story, and it will sometimes go to dark places. There will be crude humor, foul language, sexual content, and lots of blood. You'll get a taste of that from the story's resident psychopath in just a few moments. Read at your own discretion.

Star Fox (c)Nintendo

* * *

 **Star Fox: The Hybrid Project**

Prologue

Part One

Blood. Bones. Flesh.

The sight was such a comfort. Corpses littered the linoleum floor, the metallic scent of blood and blooming decay all that the little vulpine could sense. Not a single body stirred. What a relief it was to see all that pure, untainted blood. What a relief it was to know how uncorrupted their organs were. What a relief it was to kill something naturally created—to kill something that was born, that underwent growth, that experienced mundane pleasures and sicknesses. Something that knew life.

His bare indigo feet were coated in the red liquid pooling on the floor. Below him lay the body of a young canine, white-furred with empty blue eyes that would forever display the sheer terror she had experienced in her final moments. She was so pristine, even with all that red caked on her pelt; red wine on white silk. He gently nudged her cheek with his foot, leaving a small crimson mark where his toe had caressed her fur. Her head lolled pathetically, bringing a scowl to his face. How ungraceful.

In his annoyance, he pulled his foot up before mercilessly bringing it down on her neck with a satisfying _crack_. There. Mangled throat included, she was perfect now—a natural death, for a natural creature. He smiled, tilting his head. He sunk into his knees, eying her appreciatively. She was beautiful, a mane of white tresses dipped in blood splayed about her. Her eyelashes were thick, long, and black. She was built like the epitome of a woman, with large, round hips, full breasts, robust thighs, and a waist that sunk inwards.

His interest quickly faded. Far down below, the sound of slamming doors echoed, dancing up the stairwell outside the room. They were so incredibly fast— _very_ impressive.

The north wall, opposite the doors, was a thin shield of paned glass that teased the viewer with Fichina's beautiful tundra. It drew yet another scowl from him. They ruined it. Once a land of frozen desolation, impossible to inhabit by a typical person, Fichina had been a serene beauty with terrible power, capable of taking life in an instant. Now, it had been reduced to a docile, fluff-blanketed carpet, its only considerable ailment the light snow showers and treacherous ice. All because they had to get in the way of natural science, had to cut out nature's tongue and render it speechless.

He glanced up, cocking his head a bit to eye the vent above him, sickeningly predatory yellow orbs piercing the dark on the other side. They made it so easy for him!

He crouched, wriggling slowly in a serpentine manner until he was properly poised. Black claws erupted from his nail beds, a grotesque, abnormal sight, the tips still stained with blood. There was, what he found to be, a comical gap where the blood separated; his fingers were drenched, but where his claws had recently receded, all traces of culpability had been erased. Only the ends remained.

The impossible power in his short, lean frame seeped into his legs, and he leaped upward, claws and toenails digging into the ceiling as he grappled for it. Liberating a hand, he tore the vent cover off, slithering inside with the speed and grace of the fastest of reptiles. The heavy silence was unbroken, his existence so abominable and so ethereal in nature that even the superstitious would never have even fathomed his presence.


	2. Prologue, Part Two

Prologue

Part Two

The sky was blue.

The air was dry.

The heat was mild.

The streets were abandoned.

The dust was kicking up.

And there was a naive little thing that had submitted to her instinct to run.

A trail of blood faithfully followed her, an ever-present navigation system to dissemble her location. The will to escape—the will to live—was certainly driving her in her weakened state. She persisted despite her obvious fate, the odds turned cruelly against her in a game that had cheated her time and time again. Because behind her was another, and behind him a third, a chain of victims playing the universe's cruel hunting game.

This loose, chaotic line struggled to hold, the chase not so thrilling as it should have been. _She_ was deserving of any decent soul's pity, injured prey battling valiantly and desperately for the life she should have been granted. _He_ had tunnel vision, all his doubts and torturous inner conflicts suppressed in light of the objective. And the third searched for the good in front of him, empowered by the possibility of salvaging a hero and saving a life, intertwining himself with fate's undetermined intentions.

The first pair of booted feet hit the street in a lope, blood trickling down the right leg. Rickety buildings and pitiful shops lining the setting went unacknowledged. Red hair was sliding from its proper place in her braid, veiling her vision as she vehemently shoved it aside. The dangerously powerful sedative was beginning to affect her, the muscles in her body slackening more with every step. There was nowhere to go, and her body wouldn't support her long enough to find a haven as it was. She managed only a hundred feet before her legs gave out, sending her to the ground with a terrible lash that brought the edge of the wound on her leg a searing pain as it skidded along the hard-packed dirt road. Her fingers, the nails a shock of matte black on the tips, dug into the earth in a sluggish attempt to pull herself forward.

A fist wound itself in the tangled remains of her braid and ripped the front of her body up so sharply that she rolled onto her rear to protect her back from injury. She was pulled a bit farther, listlessly falling on her hip and weakly placing a hand on the perpetrator's wrist as if it would make a difference. The sun was in her eyes, but she could make out the rough outline of the towering lupine above her, the glint blinding her so strong that she was unable to decipher whether the origin was of the eyes or teeth. The grip on her hair, already painful, tightened considerably, causing her to clench her jaw and emit a grunt through her closed mouth. Anger coursed through her, all of her efforts having gone to waste and all her hopes dashed as coldly as they had always been, when she had been so incredibly close to liberation. From the recesses of her will she gathered what little strength she had left and focused it, her fury driving her left leg upward and spinning her around, twisted hair and all. She felt her foot connect with an elbow, and was allowed the satisfying sound of a murderous snarl before she was released and fell to the ground once more, her energy thoroughly depleted. The darkness closed in before she felt her head hit the ground.

Her attacker, however, was livid. He threw his right elbow outward despite the bruising pain, instinctively stretching it. The woman at his feet was unconscious, which made him all the more irate; he couldn't even effectively bestow her with a single curse now.

Blaster fire whizzed by his foot, a reminder of the urgency of the situation. He gruffly snatched her by the back of her shirt, heaving her surprisingly leaden body over his left shoulder and moving off as a second shot flew by his right leg. Warning shots would not stop him, and both he and the man in pursuit of him knew this, but it was clear that in the current predicament killing had been no one's intention.

This was the chase that ensued; one man after another, two warring parties looking to achieve the same goal. They ghosted the streets in their race, leaving behind the city in sight of the carrier that was nearing the surface ahead, spraying waves of dust over the terrain. The lupine was forced to pause in order for the ship to touch down, glancing back to see the figure of a vulpine man running toward him. He'd drawn his gun again, slowing his sprint, and was close enough for the two to lock gazes. The latter shot at him, but he'd hardly needed to dodge, knowing that all he would have felt was a slight burn as it skimmed him. Though there was fire in the air, the stillness between them was most prominent, curious resentment and furtive respect clearly the perceived obstacles that plagued them.

The hatch released and the ship's door lowered, the guns firing on the other man as he ducked aside, taking cover behind a dip in the rocky hillside. The lupine turned wordlessly and climbed, disappearing inside. The ship ascended, returning to the sky, receiving no further attacks even as the vulpine below watched it shrink until it was intangible completely.

The chain had been broken, but the race was not over.


	3. The Hybrid Theory

**Note:** This chapter is a bit shorter than I wanted it to be, but there's a limit to the amount of content I wanted to throw into the introduction.

* * *

 _Chapter One_

The Hybrid Theory

An abrasive cacophony of cluttering metal tore through Fox's consciousness, signaling to him how deeply he had succumbed to sleep. His body felt abnormally heavy, eyelids literally threatening to close again despite the muffled voices that carried through the terribly thin walls to his room. He glanced at the clock, but the cyan numbers displayed a blinking twelve followed by two zeroes.

Groaning in vexation, he didn't bother to plug it back in. It had undoubtedly fallen out of the outlet, the great lot of which were loose on the ship. He regretted giving Falco the wireless one; he'd never get it back, now. He slid out of bed, rolling his left shoulder with a grunt. His left arm had lain under his pillow as he slept, and it was sore.

Sighing, he snatched his flight suit off of the end of the bed frame. His jacket and handkerchief were situated beside it, boots down below. They were the only real objects of color in the room other than his comforter and the alarm clock beside the bed, the former an unattractive grey-tinted green and the latter likely due to sit blank from then on. Unlike the _Great Fox_ , the beds were standard, pushed to the corner of the twenty square foot room rather than built into a niche that was, essentially, a domed window. There was a regular window across from the door, on the other side of his nightstand, with rounded edges but an otherwise unimpressive frame that was simply the wall. Aside from a dresser and bathroom on the left wall, and his bed and table on the right, the room was bare.

Fox shrugged into his suit, zipping it and busying himself with the remaining accessories. He jostled his shoulder again with his right hand, and made a flat, joyless exit from the room. As he passed over the threshold and the door slid shut behind him, he scratched an itch behind his ear and glanced down the hall to his right. The captain's deck, or bridge of the ship, was situated up there, but the fluctuating voices from his left were his destination. With a yawn, he started off that way, eventually recognizing the sound of Falco and Slippy's banter as he neared the kitchen door on his right.

The doorway was open, and when Fox stepped in, he saw Falco and Slippy huddled over the stove, elbowing each other while Krystal leaned against the counter next to them. Her eyes were on Fox when he entered, and though he'd grown used to that—her, invariably anticipating his arrival—his slow start caused him to blink in surprise, anyway.

"You're gonna burn 'em! Buzz off!" Slippy exclaimed, thrusting his forearm into Falco's ribcage.

" _Burn_ them? They're barely cooked! I ain't eating that slimy shit, and neither is anyone else," Falco snapped, pushing Slippy's shoulder back with his elbow.

"I didn't ask for your opinion!" Slippy riposted, continuing to fight the bird.

"Good morning," Krystal called, smiling wryly at Fox. Both men stopped and craned their heads to glance back at the doorway, and Slippy turned around with a grin, fork in hand.

"Hey Fox! Sleep good?" he inquired. Falco turned back to the stove, successfully launching Slippy out of the vicinity altogether with a forceful shoulder check.

"Falco," Krystal chastised, furrowing her brows with a look of disapproval.

"Yeah, you frickin' jerk," Slippy groused.

He pulled a second fork from the drawer on his right whilst adjusting the burner's heat setting on the control pad. "Hey, I'm just saving everyone's breakfast."

"Great," Fox interjected flatly, stuffing his hands in his pockets and leaning into the doorway, head resting against the wall. He couldn't believe how tired he was.

"See?" Falco snorted.

"I was talking to Slippy. To answer your question," he added, nodding at the frog.

He displayed an expression of confusion for a moment, before what he said registered and he frowned thoughtfully. "You sure? You don't look so hot."

"Nobody appreciates my efforts," Falco grumbled jokingly. "Yo, Slip, start on the eggs or something."

"Hell no! Do it yourself!" he snapped, spinning on his heel. "I'm not doing you any favors!"

"Don't know why you're so jaded," Falco sniggered. "Not everybody likes fuckin' Aquan cuisine."

Fox rolled onto his back and closed his eyes. The bickering continued, accompanied by the sound of the fridge opening. Undoubtedly, Slippy had conceded to Falco's request, though he would naturally deny it. Fox inhaled and exhaled softly, ears twitching at the mundane clatter of the morning. The day would likely fail to be purposeful, and the potential of him wasting precious time coveting a much-needed nap was extreme. He felt something very near to unusual irritation at his acknowledgement of the day's routine; perhaps he should have been selfish that morning and stayed in bed.

He felt the faintest kiss of wind and opened his eyes, meeting a pair of turquoise ones immediately. He felt a sharp rush of trepidation at he and Krystal's proximity; she knew it made him fidgety when she neared him so intimately, no telepathy required. She was holding a steaming mug, which he glanced down at, slow to react to the offering. He blinked to ward off the droop in his eyes, smiling slightly as he took it. Their fingers never touched, and when he turned to face her, shoulder returning to the door frame, he inched backward a bit, hesitant to handle her flirtations. He clamped down on the thought, trying to distract himself with Falco and Slippy's infantile fighting. Though literal mind-reading was a stretch, she was perceptive enough to comprehend when he was avoiding her advances, and he was afraid to give her the wrong impression whilst hiding his own embarrassing confusion. Although, to all other eyes, it was clear that he was completely enamored by her.

She crossed her arms, smile fading just slightly and he repressed a wince. Too late.

"You went to bed pretty early last night," she reminisced. "Did you not sleep well?"

He briefly reflected that the fact was obvious, but shook it off. She was just making conversation. And deciphering everything in his head in the process, most likely. "Eh. I'm fine," he answered nonchalantly.

She paused, and was unable to further the conversation as a short klaxon sounded. Everyone's comms emulated the noise at a lower decibel, and ROB's voice drifted through the intercom. "Incoming message from General Peppy. Priority, one."

Fox and Krystal's eyes simultaneously widened in surprise. They'd just dealt with a coterie of space pirates only two days before, and it was hard for Fox to imagine what else could be so important. He held a fear that he would be notified at any given moment that the Aparoids had returned after their four month relief, despite their complete extinction at his team's hands.

Since he had nowhere nearby to set the cup down, and felt that handing it back to Krystal would have been rude, Fox gripped the mug of brown liquid in his left hand and pushed off of the wall into the hallway. He didn't bother answering ROB on the comm, aware that the robot's cameras would alert him to the team's every move and noise, anyway. They filed down the hallway, silently entering the bridge, which was a sad sight in comparison to their old one. It was set up similarly, the deck creating a _U_ shape in lining the room and being adorned by the captain's chair and a surrounding control panel; from there, the floor descended to the level which housed three nooks for navigators and the like, as well as a port for ROB. The window spanned the entire front half of the bridge, ending where the upper deck met it.

"Go ahead, ROB," Fox said, waving his right hand and pausing behind the captain's seat. He leaned on it, finally taking a swig of the drink in his hand. Instantly, he felt guilty for even the slight discomfort between him and Krystal moments before; she'd made it exactly how he liked it, and the sensation of hot liquid running down his throat made him feel as though it had breathed life into him. She certainly didn't dote on him all the time, so it was a welcome gesture to Fox.

The projector on the lower deck hummed to life, a blue ring of light seeping from its base. The familiar features of Peppy Hare accumulated, everything from his shoulders up appearing to be suspended in the air. It was odd to see the general's coat on the former Star Fox member, a reminder of how much things had changed in past years. Despite his temper, the senior pilot was missed greatly for his much appreciated expertise and fatherly presence.

Fox smiled the moment their eyes met. "Hey, old timer. You're looking good."

Amusement crossed the hare's face, but instantly Fox was aware of the deep bags under his eyes. "That's an awfully audacious way to greet your superior," the rabbit joked, exhaustion thick in his voice nonetheless.

"Last I checked, I don't _actually_ work for you," Fox replied teasingly, though his smile was nearly absent. "But what have you got for us?"

"Nothing good, Fox," he sighed. "A whole lot of trouble."

"Not more space pirates, I hope?" Fox remarked hollowly.

Peppy glanced up as if he were scrutinizing their ceiling. "Ah...who knows. Could be. Let me just give you a quick background before I delve into things. This will be a lot to take in, so follow along as best you can."

"That's comforting," Fox muttered.

Below Peppy, the system appeared, the planets all in their current places and orbiting a burning Lylat. A series of red dots appeared on and around several of the floating orbs, brightly contrasting with the cerulean color of the projected map. Peppy glanced down again, leading Fox to believe that from the buck's standpoint, the map was also visible. He nodded at it, saying, "Those points there are markers of a chain of locations we've discovered recently. Some of them may look familiar."

Fox noted the points on Aquas, Fortuna, Zoness, Titania, Macbeth, and Venom. "Andross' old outposts," he stated, narrowing his eyes.

"Or locations associated with him, skirmishes during the war, et cetera," Peppy said pointedly.

"Please tell me we aren't dealing with this again," Falco bemoaned, echoing the vulpine's thoughts.

"We received information pointing out those locations marked in red three days ago. There was no additional explanation or info, so I had a scout team covertly investigate Fortuna immediately. They found a base, an old compound, below the planet's surface that allegedly looks to have been in use at least four months ago. Since we came across no problems, I sent another team to Aquas. They found a similar base." The hare paused, as if he were waiting for an inquiry.

"What kind of 'bases'?" Fox asked.

"Military outposts and research labs, naturally."

"Alright...can I hope that these aren't more of Andross' bases?" Fox queried hesitantly.

"Yes, and no," Peppy replied. "Andross may have used them, but they aren't his."

Fox frowned, studying the designated areas. "Those are all places he occupied, though."

"Yes," Peppy nodded, "but upon investigation we found that all of them held a stark contrast to Andross' old compounds. The architecture, technology, all of it was completely different. Their purpose wasn't to build an army."

"So whose are they?"

A hand appeared, and Peppy massaged his forehead, ears drooping. "Well, as a fair warning, I'll let you know that I'm going to confuse you. I'm a bit out of sorts, so humor me. This information we received was exactly what you're looking at—a literal map of the system with pinpointed venues. It was sent in by an anonymous source."

"Why?" Krystal asked, studying the map intently.

"It was a taunt," Peppy wheezed dejectedly. "We were being mocked."

"...By a map?" Fox ventured tentatively.

"So someone thinks they're being funny?" Falco snorted. "Why is this a big deal?"

"Because these bases were recently vacated," Peppy snapped. "We had no idea they were there, nor that they were in operation."

"All of them?" Fox asked.

"Yes. After Aquas, we scouted the rest out one by one, and they were all the same. Recently operating, but abandoned. They seemed to have been left unattended around the time the Aparoids showed up."

"I can see why that might be the case. So they probably belong to the same person that sent you the map, or an associate," Fox concluded.

"That seems plausible. And I'm fairly sure I know who it is that we're dealing with, which is _not_ Andross."

Fox resisted the urge to breathe a sigh of relief. "Do I get three guesses?"

"No. It will be a waste of precious time, because you won't guess correctly," Peppy retorted harshly. "This is an enemy you will not have heard of."

"Yeah, well, the last time that happened, we blew their nest to kingdom come," Falco replied nonchalantly. "So just lay it on us."

"There isn't much," Peppy warned. "I visited Ge—Pepper the other day, you know. He requested my presence not long after this anonymous message was received and he was notified. That was a polite formality, I suppose. Anyhow, after a few pleasantries, he brought up this map. He was being cryptic, and eventually began to tell me about a scientist he knew that worked in the Cornerian Defense Force, whose name was Enzo Genovese."

"Definitely never heard of him before," Fox commented.

"Yes, I know. Neither had I until the other day. Pepper mentioned that most didn't know who he was, and he'd insinuated that he had a hand in that," Peppy disclosed.

"Really," Fox mumbled rhetorically. Pepper resorting to politics and stifling any sort of knowledge struck him as incredibly odd. He'd had something of a bias, though, invariably seeing the canine as a candid man.

"He brought this man up based on a suspicion regarding his involvement in the map," Peppy explained, appearing troubled. "To give me a bit of context, he recited his story and personal encounter with this man. Enzo was reclusive and quiet. He worked with a team of other scientists on space warps and warp systems, but preferred to work alone. Pepper knew him fairly well, and was one of few who did. They were light friends, for lack of a better term. Enzo also had an affinity for bio-technology, but other than Pepper, there weren't many others who were aware. He only worked with the CDF for seven years, eventually leaving in 3005, after which he wasn't heard from again."

"Until...?" Fox prompted.

"Now, theoretically," Peppy responded. "I'm entertaining the idea that these bases belong to him, and that he is our 'anonymous source'."

"You didn't know him?" Fox questioned curiously. "You and my dad worked with the CDF for a while, too, right?"

"Right," Peppy verified, inhaling as a melancholy look passed over his eyes. "I don't even think I ever saw him, period. I'm assuming the same goes for Jim."

Fox cracked his neck, wincing at the surprising discomfort. "So how do we know this is him?"

Peppy sighed tiredly. "This will sound familiar, but Pepper said Enzo had a lust for extreme power—although, he allegedly made an efficient attempt at concealing the fact. Still, he was a force to be reckoned with. The moment he wanted something, it was already his. While working for the CDF, he was a king in his own right, and was well on his way to a lifetime of leisure and fulfillment with all his work. However, Enzo _coincidentally_ happened to leave the CDF and go off the radar right before Andross' infamous bio-weapon experiment wiped out an entire section of Corneria City in the summer of 3005."

"Does that mean he knew about that? That he got out before things got bad?" Krystal inquired earnestly, thick lashes brushing her brow bones due to her wide-eyed gaze.

"And that he and Andross were buddies?" Falco added flatly.

"Yes, yes, and possibly. I'll get there in a moment," Peppy said, waving at Falco. "Though Pepper and Enzo were well acquainted, he told me that about three years into their friendship he began noticing the similarities between Enzo and Andross. The two worked in the same department, and they were polar opposites in everything other than their ingenuity and interests, which is what caused Pepper such trepidation. The two never publicly interacted with each other, but Pepper admitted that he began to feel uncomfortable in Enzo's presence around the same time that he began to distrust Andross over all his lethal experiments. Enzo's friendship with him became twisted. After Pepper's perspective changed, the warier Pepper got, the more Enzo subtly taunted him, revealing more of his true colors. Pepper described him in a way that was...well, let's just say I was a little disturbed by the look on his face."

"So why did he disappear? And did he ever have any contact with Andross?" Fox asked, frustrated with Peppy's lack of elaboration on the latter subject.

"No information has been collected regarding his disappearance. Pepper didn't know, either. But he's sure this is him," Peppy replied, nodding at the map again.

"So that's just a hunch, then," Falco snorted. "For all we know, this guy is dead. There's no evidence that he's done anything at all. Pepper probably just lost a pissing contest a while back."

Fox restrained himself from commenting on the irony of Falco making derogatory remarks about pissing contests. "So, if Enzo was so great, why hasn't anyone heard of him?"

"Like I said, Pepper probably censored his existence completely. He blatantly told me he'd been hoping that Enzo had disappeared for good. That's why he never brought it up, and why Enzo was never mentioned. There was that unwonted fear in him that I can't understand, not being familiar with this man. But I digress—this is just context to give you a grip on the situation at hand," Peppy explained. "The issue now isn't Enzo's potential taunting. It's what ensued afterward. I've learned that in the past two weeks there have been infrequent disturbances all over the system, with unidentifiable causes. Most were minuscule, but there were some that were of a severe nature. One in particular took place very recently..."

The projection imploded, and a group of staggered images and editorials popped up. Everyone leaned in, and after a moment, Krystal gently placed her fingers on Fox's arm, aghast. "Oh my..."

His mouth went dry simultaneously. The photos were gruesome. Stacks—literal stacks—of mutilated bodies were neatly arranged atop bloodied floors, terror still evident on the faces of the deceased. They were all young, and along with the shot of a tattered threshold missing its doors, segregated by a light rail that acted as caution tape, Fox assumed that it had been some sort of school. He drew a hand over his muzzle, shaking his head slightly with a heavy exhalation through his nostrils. "Jesus."

"I know. It was horrible...absolutely horrible. That was the main campus for the Fichina Institute. Nearly five hundred students were killed."

" _Five hundred_?" Slippy repeated shrilly.

"Yes. Granted, the campus is massive and the school hosts nearly four thousand students, but even so, this is the most devastating insurgent massacre Lylat has seen since...well, since Andross." The news articles expanded, replacing the photos at the forefront. A minute klaxon was emitted, and beside them appeared a monitor. A video began to play of a female canine reporter standing in front of the roped-off institute. Military and police forces were clustered around in the background, moving briskly.

" _Breaking news here at the Fichina Institute's main campus. A_ brutal _assault on the school was initiated less than an hour ago by an unidentified attacker. Though the carnage is abundant and the devastation widespread, very little information has been gathered at this time. Nearly five hundred people were killed during the attack, and yet more disturbing is the fact that no weaponry appears to have been utilized by the perpetrator. The victims were savagely mutilated, all bearing the wounds of a grotesque, hands-on assault. Sixteen administrators, eleven on-campus security guards and a whopping four hundred and thirty-two students were murdered, officials stating that the majority of the killings took place in a set of closely-nestled dormitories near to the campus's center. Despite the propinquity of a neighboring Cornerian research and military outpost, by the time special armed forces arrived, the demolition was irreversible and thorough. No attacker was alleged to have been seen, but a handful of survivors were so traumatized by the event that authorities were unable to extract any further information regarding the event. Allegedly, the entire institute experienced a colossal power outage that affected even several backup generators, and briefly affected the military outpost. Moreover, no footage of the assailant was recorded. No further details have been disclosed at this time_ —"

The video disappeared, replaced once again by Peppy's head. "That," he said, "happened just yesterday. I hate to show you all that, but I think it's necessary for what I'm about to tell you."

"Christ," Falco muttered, notably bothered. His arms were folded as usual, but his features were tense. "There's more?"

"We haven't gotten any more info on the Fichina incident, but we do know a few things about several others. The one you should all be focused on occurred on Titania the day before yesterday. Scientists visiting the ruins in the northern hemisphere were stranded when their ship malfunctioned, preventing them from being able to leave the planet. Apparently, parts from the ship had been removed and stolen. Later, when they were rescued, they claimed to have at some point seen a mushroom cloud and heard an explosion nearby. They said they believed they saw a small ship limp away from the area that was being simultaneously fired upon from the ground. One of them—a photographer accompanying the research team, no less—investigated and found something interesting."

The system map dropped downward, but didn't disperse, as Peppy's head shrunk and moved back, veiled by more photos that appeared. There were four—one was of scattered debris, a set of smoking fighters sunken into the dunes. The second was of the ship's engine compartment, which looked to have been tinkered with. The third, however, had been taken from what looked to be the top of a sand dune, as it was looking down on the scene. In the distance was the trio of destroyed fighters, and it appeared that there was a figure lying not far from the wreckage. Squinting, Fox made out the bare outline of a second figure further away, but it was small enough that he was unable to decipher what the person looked like.

It was the fourth that grabbed everyone's attention, however. Taken at a diagonal, downward angle, the photo looked down a large, sloping hill on a tiny ship in its shadow. A grey avian, looking to be less than two hundred feet from the photographer's position, was mid-stride in what was clearly a frenzied sprint. A shock of braided silver hair flew behind the figure, and the body shape further confirmed that it was a female.

The third and fourth photo were enlarged, erasing the first two. Peppy's voice could be heard again, but his head had faded out to emphasize the photos. "Those fighters are all not of any make previously known to Lylat. The one depicted in the second picture," he said, referring to the photo of the girl running downhill, "looks like a cargo hold, but a tiny one. More suited for someone relocating to another planet with their belongings."

"So what exactly happened?" Fox asked.

"The photographer mentioned that it seemed like that girl there was running from whoever was piloting those ships, and that he saw someone else run into the cargo carrier right before her. Apparently, he was unable to take any other pictures—said that he was lucky he hadn't been seen. It was complete idiocy to go investigate the incident, if you ask me," Peppy snorted. "But, this is the most information we've attained regarding these kinds of events, so his idiocy benefits us. Anyway, he stayed there while that ship took off, and said that someone appeared immediately after and began shooting on them from below. This third party was definitely some sort of soldier, from what we've heard. This photographer and his partners were aware of our base there and radioed it afterward. They told officials when they arrived about the incident; we found the crash sight, but the body displayed in that first photo wasn't anywhere to be found, and neither was the shooter. The wreckage had been almost completely demolished, as if it had been burned nearly to cinders. We have a team working on analyzing what little we have. Clearly, whoever they were, they were covering their tracks."

"Okay...what does all this have to do with Fichina and Enzo?" Fox inquired.

"Quite a bit, actually. We know where that girl—the one running—came from. Or at least _who_ she came from."

"Enzo, I'm assuming?" he said.

"Yes...but there's more to it," Peppy replied gravely. "Normally, this would be an absurd and impractical scenario, but from what we know of Enzo, it may have some truth to it. This photographer claimed that when he saw this girl run, there was something strange. He couldn't stop babbling about how incredibly fast she had been, and he alleged that she had seemed unnatural."

"Creepy," Slippy muttered.

"Now, I would chalk that up to the heat, fear, shock, or any combination of those things, but I have a theory that would support his claims," Peppy continued. "With what we've seen—like Fichina—we know there are multiple parties involved, because of how widespread the aforementioned disturbances are, and where along the timeline they lay. Moreover, all of them involved strange events in which a perpetrator was never identified, and the feats accomplished should have been completely impossible to achieve without being seen."

"Like killing five hundred people?" Falco remarked coldly.

"Exactly like that. So I had an epiphany, and it's a bit bizarre, as well as very dark. Andross had been the one to launch functioning bio-weaponry into existence, and you and I know first-hand what it looked like. Now, Enzo, as I said, held an unhealthy obsession with power, akin to Andross. However, from what we know, he was more reclusive and secretive; potentially more interested in engineering his _own_ genetics as well. Naturally, he had to have known that performing tests on his own body would prove hazardous and harmful—unlike Andross, who was too blinded by his lust for power to care—and he couldn't use the same wildlife that, for example, Andross had used to experiment. He would need an organism very similar to himself."

"He used _people_?" Krystal demanded, horrified.

"I wouldn't be surprised if Andross did, too," Fox replied. "As a matter of fact, I'm surprised no real evidence of that ever surfaced after the war."

"Well, you kinda blew his pad up," Falco barbed.

"But I know Andross was doing it to himself, because he was...deformed when I went in there," Fox said, repressing a shudder. "I guess Enzo has more boundaries."

"I sincerely doubt that," Peppy responded flatly. "Because I'm positive they collaborated, those two."

"Saw that coming," Falco snorted.

Peppy grunted, the scowl on his face fathomable despite the fact that he currently could not be seen. "During the period in time when Enzo had been employed in the CDF, as I said before, Andross had been as well. Enzo disappeared right before Andross was expelled, and that little taunt he sent us is the first time he has been heard from him since."

"The point being...?" Fox prompted.

"The point _being_ ," Peppy said jadedly, "that having ties with Andross would provide Enzo with any number of resources, including _living people_. For all we know, it was their partnership that allowed Andross to manifest the state he was in at the end of the war."

"Is there any other evidence of that?" Fox inquired. "Because what you're insinuating seems probable, but I don't want to get into anything without definite facts. And what you're theorizing is dependent on a testimony from General Pepper. I trust him, but there's nothing that proves that what he's saying is real."

"Well, no, not really. But it _is_ probable. It all fits, makes perfect sense. Horrible as he may have been, Andross' intelligence was otherwise unrivaled, and with an ambitious partner like Enzo, there's no end to the things they could have done. That's why I think Enzo and Andross collaborated and used the latter's research to...enhance the body."

Fox felt dread slide into the pit of his stomach. "... _Enhance_ the body?"

"I can't be sure, but I believe the perpetrators of all these events may be experiments of Enzo and Andross. It would explain their unbelievable capabilities."

"Bio-weapons," Krystal breathed. "They're like bio-weapons, aren't they?"

"Yes, that's why I mentioned bio-weaponry in the first place. But, unlike bio-weapons, these are _people_ whom probably have full control of their actions, no matter how they are influenced. Clearly, Enzo met some level of success, whether or not it included Andross, or vice versa."

"So, Enzo was a super genius, like Andross, but how do you know he experimented on people if he just disappeared?" Slippy questioned. "Heck, this sounds more like Andross."

"Who else could have sent the message? These aren't Andross' bases, we _know_ that. If Enzo had the same brain power that Andross did, he could very well have set up an underground network," Peppy responded.

"And how do you know they aren't Andross'?" Fox interrogated. "Look, this is all just a possibility. My instinct is telling me they would be his, and not Enzo's."

" _My_ instinct and _experience_ tells me this isn't Andross, because he's died _three times_. He has no means of resurrection at this point—"

"That we know of," Fox interrupted.

"—and Enzo's disappearance is too suspicious."

"Maybe he was killed," Fox suggested simply.

"But if he was important enough to be theoretically killed, especially so covertly, he should be a person of interest," Peppy snapped, so sharply that Fox could imagine the aggravation contorting his features. He flattened his ears. He didn't mean to bring any stress on him, nor belabor every statement he made, but he'd never seen the hare so out of sync with realism. "Listen to me, Fox. Pepper said that Enzo had an _affinity_ for bio-technology. He was insinuating to me that it was a secret interest of his. These disturbances can't have been performed by just anyone. It's impossible. If Enzo is the next criminal superpower, he very well may have been watching Lylat from the shadows throughout and beyond the war, experimenting and genetically and biologically engineering living creatures all the while. I'm concerned, Fox. I'm concerned that we are about to be in grave danger again, and we don't have the resources to defend ourselves!"

Fox took a literal step back at Peppy's frenzied tone. He couldn't understand what could possibly have happened to make the normally level-headed man so panicked. With that in mind, he tried to entertain everything he'd been hearing up to that point, casting aside his doubts for but a moment to ensure that there was no detail he had missed that would influence his stance on things. "Okay, okay...so, let's say Enzo is back in business, and he's on an Andross power trip," Fox offered slowly. "He's got bases we didn't know about, he vacated them and gave away their location to mess with us, and now he's got bio-weapons that are basically normal people with superhero complexes running amok causing havoc. What's our plan, then?"

"We need information, immediately. Enzo or not, these disturbances are probably related to Fichina and Titania. Now we need to know where these people originated from and why they're out and about."

"Is it possible that they were recently...?" Krystal said, faltering with a concerned expression.

"What? Altered?" Peppy finished. "Yes, that may very well be the case. The intelligence department is supposed to be looking into missing persons files, so we know if anyone disappeared recently. But for all we know, these people have been with him as long as he has been in hiding, perhaps longer, assuming this is his doing. We don't even know how many there are, but we know there has to be at least four. The incident on Fichina was one, another on Zoness and Aquas each, which is more likely two, and these two on Titania."

"Zoness and Aquas?" Fox repeated, glancing down at the still-visible map. "He has bases on both of those planets."

"Yes. He also had one on Titania. He did not, however, have one on Fichina."

"Well, what happened there? On Zoness and Aquas?"

Peppy's hand comically appeared, slicing through the photos, and disappeared as he waved nonchalantly. "Bank robberies. Big ones. That could be coincidence, I suppose."

"How big?" Slippy asked.

"Big," was all Peppy said in response. "Back to the point—they're suddenly roaming the system, and we don't know why. The Titania incident leads me to believe that Enzo's experiments didn't go according to plan. Clearly, that woman is running from someone who isn't affiliated with Corneria or any other known parties in any way."

"Are you saying they're running from Enzo now?" Falco asked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He had plopped down into the commander's seat and had his feet up on the dash. Had it been the _Great Fox_ , Peppy would have skinned anyone who even considered doing that, but it wasn't the _Great Fox_ , and Peppy was currently just a large quantity of pixels—at the moment, he was physically nonexistent.

"Maybe. And I would think that Enzo was sending them out to execute some sort of plan, but that would still mean the Titania incident probably wasn't intentional. Unlike the Fichina Institute massacre, that person—and whoever they were allegedly with—meant no harm to anyone, or those scientists would be dead. I have a feeling that woman isn't a threat to Lylat—at least, not at the moment."

"Okay, okay, but how can you believe that Andross and this Enzo guy made a bunch of hybrid thingies when all you have is a photo that _might_ be one?" Slippy asked dubiously. "Plus, you didn't say there was any evidence that they worked together. I mean, not to burst your bubble or anything, old man, but that's kinda...you know."

The photos dissipated, Peppy's face reappearing with a scowl adorning it. "I _said_ I wasn't sure. Are we going all the way back to this, Slippy?"

"You sound pretty sure," Slippy muttered.

"Peppy," Krystal interjected softly, "That actually brings up a question of mine." She paused, and his features relaxed as he waited expectantly. "...You said there was a second person. With that woman."

"Oh, right. The photographer believes there was a second person, but the description is unreliable. Aside from their pursuer, he mentioned he may have seen a red vulpine. And that's really all he claims to have seen," Peppy replied simply, with a slight undertone of irritation, though not directed at Krystal.

"Hold up. First off, what the hell were these schmucks doing on Titania if the base there was empty?" Falco demanded.

"They needed parts for their ship, birdbrain!" Slippy exclaimed mockingly.

"No shit, genius. But they're idiots if they thought they would find anything there. They're lucky they found anybody, let alone something other than an outpost," Falco snapped. "Titania is sand, sand, and more sand, with a sprinkling of stationed troops dicking around."

"Maybe they had no choice," Krystal offered. "They _were_ scavenging for parts."

"It makes sense that they would land on Titania if they were nearby and their ship was malfunctioning or needed maintenance," Fox agreed. "I doubt they wanted to land there. And since—like Falco said—Enzo's bases were empty when they were found, I doubt that's where they started. They might have been trying to find their way there to scavenge for equipment. But I guess Zoness and Aquas could potentially negate that theory, unless all these people were heading for those compounds."

"Second off," Falco said abruptly, "Who was after them?"

"No idea. Like I said, they were covering their tracks and bore no insignia or outward signs of any affiliation. It was probably one of Enzo's followers."

"Does this idiot photographer know what the person chasing them _looks_ like, at least?" Falco inquired in aggravation.

"Canine. Large frame. Possibly dark in color. He doesn't pay much attention to detail, despite his profession," Peppy snorted.

"But not Cornerian?" Krystal verified. "Or from the military?"

"Definitely not."

"Aaaand," Falco started grouchily, completely altering the course of the conversation, "are we supposed to be looking for these guys? At six in the morning?" he added bitingly.

"Right on the mark, as usual, Falco," Peppy teased, somewhat harshly. Falco scowled, and he continued, "I _do_ want you to find them. They're the most promising thing we've got right now, and they just might not be murderous psychopaths. The rations tell us that much."

Falco and Slippy made strange faces, blinking in confusion. There was a beat of silence, the four figures hovering around the projector waiting on an explanation. Peppy furrowed his brow. "Didn't I mention that?"

"...No. No, you didn't," Fox replied dryly.

"Ah...I'm getting old," Peppy joked blackly. "Yes, they left rations on the ship that they took parts from. They also left the radio intact and in working condition, obviously."

Fox glanced at Falco. "That's promising, I guess." In reality, he hardly found it comforting given the potential of the situation, and could tell Falco was thinking something similar.

"It _is_ ," Krystal said brightly, placing her hand on Fox's shoulder and leaning in to him slightly. "We might be able to reason with them. Maybe they can help us."

Slippy groaned. "We have to go on a hunting party? What do we look like, bounty hunters?"

Krystal rolled her eyes benevolently and laughed. Falco remarked, "Who's we? You sure as hell ain't going."

"Hey!" Slippy snapped.

"Guys, calm down," Fox ordered bluntly. He glanced up at an annoyed-looking Peppy. "Alright, old timer. If you've got any other details, they'd be appreciated."

"I do," he responded sourly. "If you lot would listen."

"How's about how we find these guys?" Slippy suggested.

Peppy's head replaced the photos, and his right ear began to twitch. "As I was just about to say...I would assume they landed on Papetoon. It's the nearest habitable planet to Titania at the moment, and I doubt they got far if their attacker managed to hit them. The photos showed that they were in bad shape. ROB can help you look for them, but until then, we're contacting personnel there to see if any reports have come in regarding these two. Unfortunately, we haven't got anyone monitoring that area to help you. We're spread thin as it is, and in light of these events we need the bulk of our forces to pull back and defend Corneria at all costs. Besides, the government wasn't about to fund a mission for this kind of thing, being that there isn't much solid evidence."

"Whoa!" Falco snapped. "Then how are you paying us?"

"When—not if—you bring these two back and we get more information, which is inevitable, money won't be an issue. And I'll make sure the funds are abundant. Let's say...oh, twenty thousand credits?"

"For a frickin' rescue mission? Hell yeah!" Slippy exclaimed excitedly.

Falco emitted a defeated groan. "You gotta be kidding me. How do you guys even have that much to spare after the Aparoids?"

Fox scratched the back of his head instinctively. "So our objective is to round these two up, point and case?"

"For now, that's all I ask," Peppy replied. "And sooner rather than later, because you obviously won't be the only ones looking for them."

"Alright. We're on it," Fox sighed.

"Good. You can report straight to me if you need to at any point. Peppy, out."

The hologram dispersed, and silence fell on the group. Fox found it difficult to fathom a search and possible rescue mission after everything he'd just heard, and almost wished that Peppy had simply given them the mission and filled in the blanks later. There were already a million, the entire theory regarding Enzo supported by little evidence in addition. There wasn't much to go on, but refusing Pepper would have been difficult enough—refusing Peppy felt like an impossible task. And the funds would be abundant...

"If we get killed doing this, I'm dragging your ass to hell with me," Falco growled, louring at Fox.

"Shouldn't this be your type of mission?" Fox joked, raising a brow. For added measure, he took a second swig of his coffee, which had disappointingly cooled some. "You know, risk-taking under no specified reasoning."

"I'm not in the Lylat Peace Association. It's not my job to rescue homicidal mutants."

"Then don't come. You can crash with ROB. You want to go, Slip?" Fox inquired, glancing past Krystal at the frog. He did an excellent job of outwardly masking the unsaid knowledge between them.

"The hell? You _want_ to die?" Falco demanded, feet dropping to the ground.

"Jerk," Slippy grumbled. Krystal patted his shoulder soothingly.

"ROB, set a course for Papetoon, STAT," Fox ordered. He drew a hand over his muzzle as the robot complied, inherently allowing his eyes to flit to the vixen beside him. She was staring at the ground, eyebrows slightly furrowed in concentration with her hand still resting on Slippy's shoulder. His eyes twitched in curiosity as he craned his head just a bit to look at her. "You okay?"

She blinked rapidly, lips parting as she returned his gaze and her hand dropped. "Oh...yeah. I just...I'm worried about Peppy," she admitted, laying her cheek in her hand.

"He was really freakin' out," Slippy added.

Fox sighed. "Yeah. That's pretty rare, which is why we should take this seriously."

"You take everything seriously," Falco sniggered, his feet returning to the control panel. Fox walked around the captain's chair, sharply bringing the outside of his left fist into Falco's legs with a warning glare as the bird grouchily put them down. "Kind of like that."

"This is big money for a small job. Be grateful this is all we're doing," Fox replied.

"Where the hell is Peppy getting that kind of money, anyway?" Falco pointed out. "There's no way the federation is giving us that much for something like this, especially if they didn't want to fund it in the first place. We're getting roped into something."

"That's not unusual," Fox said, musing over his first venture to Sauria. Krystal's rescue hadn't been part of the deal, but he was glad he had conceded. He involuntarily glanced over, barely catching her eye before he distracted himself with the mug in his hand once again. "Pretty run of the mill, really."


	4. Prowlers

**A/N:** In case anyone is reading this, sorry for the delay. It's been hellish.

* * *

 _Chapter Two_

Prowlers

Over the distant horizon, the sky held a color in the deep recesses of blue, a reminder of the rapidly approaching morning. Nestled in an arid valley, surrounded by coarse, jagged hills, lay Papetoon's largest city. It was tastelessly known as Token City, as rumor had it that the original founder had gambled away his luxurious life on Corneria and perceived his failure as a life lesson, which prompted him to relocate to Papetoon and build the metropolis from the ground up through sheer labor and commitment. Ironically, once he had accumulated the proper funds to sustain his needs by tenfold, he fell back into his old habits and met an early death after drunkenly cracking his head open on the corner of a sink in the bathroom of his own casino, where he bled out long before he was found. Naturally, the city's upkeep and general management were rumored to be about as eloquent as its founder's demise.

The shadows of the night still loomed in abundance, craggy outcroppings of compacted earth casting a dark blanket over the city below. Lylat was struggling to rise and eliminate the dry autumn chill, a whispering breath of yellow over the mountains so faint that it could be debated as an illusion. The slopes of the hills surrounding the unsightly metropolis were buried under thick cloaks of sand that sat in perfect stillness, untouched by the wind above and like an ocean that had ceased to roil. The unmoving, silent grain was as much a contrast as could be to Token City's ever restless inner city inhabitants, obnoxious noise, and abrasive lights.

Until it was no longer still.

At the lip of the valley's ring, a silhouette, distorted by the lingering shadows of the early morning, appeared with fervid movement that was unknown to the dunes. It was immediately followed by a second shape, slimmer in frame and made to look disturbing in the obscure dark by what was most surely a thin jacket flapping below its arms. The sand stirred below their feet, hissing as its sacred sleep was disturbed by the frenzied creatures. As they made rapid progress down the slope, the second figure overtook the first, more tangible as it neared the glow of the city, which fell on the sand and progressively dissipated as it stretched.

As the duo fell into the light of the city, their features were more distinctly tangible. The first to have appeared on the hill was a vixen, deep red of fur and hosting a set of smooth chocolate irises in hard eyes. The tip of her tail was black, appearing as though a paintbrush had been run from the tip upward and drawn the color out in strokes that consumed the red. Her hair was long and as true a crimson as her fur, though it resiliently fell from its braid in soft, limp curls and was beginning to separate with grease. She wore a sleeveless grey shirt, black pants, and mid-calf boots, but donned no other accessories.

Running in front of her was an avian, also female, whose hair had hastily been wound into a similar braid at the nape of her neck and had begun to unravel in strands that teased her tail bone. Her feathers were grey, flecks of both lighter and darker shades abundant throughout them with bouts of black devouring the hair at her neck. Her eyes were a deep blue, but there was an unnatural luminescence about them that made them as unsightly and alarming as they were striking. The attire she was clothed in had only minor differences from her companion's, the shirt black and pants taupe, along with a jacket that seemed a tad too large for her and which she'd failed to zip in her frantic state. A small bag wriggled against her right hip as it was jostled, strap secured over her left shoulder. Each woman had a thin headset bouncing round their neck, held secure only by the extended mic.

The vixen watched the back of the avian as she passed, breaths heavy but with a strange regularity. The other girl had insisted on carrying the bag due to the fact that her cardiac capacity was at least double the vixen's and her speed easily triple.

The bird skidded to a halt about ten meters ahead of the vulpine, patiently awaiting her despite the fear in her eyes. The sand flew up in waves about her legs as she did so, feet sliding beneath her just enough to trigger an instinctive adjustment in her body. As the fox caught up, she snatched the avian's outstretched arm as something of a fearful gesture of trust, their eyes briefly meeting before they continued their descent down the dunes.

Breathlessly, the bird spoke, addressing the vixen. "I think there's a fence. A big one."

"There is," the vixen replied, eying the faint line that appeared to ring the last inklings of the city's expansion. The closest thing to it was a cluster of small houses that she thought may have been in poor condition, but their darkness, especially appearing at the foot of the inner city's light, made it difficult to tell. "But it's not manned. It doesn't even look _electric_ , if anything."

"Just chain link," the bird remarked distractedly, casting a wary glance over her shoulder as they continued to kick up the grain. The vixen's eyes were flitting about, her mind falling into a state of rapid critical thought. The city would have no shortage of hiding places, especially considering its dilapidated state, but she knew what was coming after her—what would have little trouble finding her. They would look everywhere, and they had she and the other girl's scent, their blood, their data...

They fell into the metropolis's faintest glow, buildings towering in the distance, visible in the sky only by the lights inside. As the hill began to level, they were met with a stretch of land a half a kilometer from the fence. Their pace naturally quickened as their feet met flat earth, their elegant form eerie in its perfection. They were tired, hungry, practically breathless; and yet, they could have been phantoms by the way they moved.

They met no trouble in reaching the city's outskirts, doubtful of sentinels and uncaring of the way the metal links dug into their fingers as they clambered up the fence. They glided up and over with terrible grace, dropping into mirrored crouches at the foot of the fence. They paused there, the bird looking to the vixen for guidance.

"There has to be a port or trade center in this place," the latter mumbled, scanning the area. They'd dropped right into a cluttered ghetto and someone's unkempt, dead lawn. There were dilapidated wooden boards perpendicular to the chain fence, looking rather pitiful both in how they were dwarfed by it and the fact that they stopped at it's edge, leaving the backside of the house completely exposed to the valley. The amount of broken or missing planks, however, made for numerous options for the two women. They could scamper through either side into the next yard, but the fox was eying a gate which had been crudely tied to its notch while the peg hung limply, clearly in need of reparation.

"Think we dropped into the wrong side of town, then," the bird joked dryly. "Assuming that's where we're headed."

"The entire city is a cesspool," the vixen answered flatly. "And I don't trust that a shipping area would be in a reasonable place because of it."

"Where are you expecting it to be?"

"Somewhere at the edge, if not outside of it. But for all I know, they stuck it in the center."

The bird glanced up. There was a plethora of buildings outlined in the distance, all much larger than they appeared from her perspective. "I haven't seen any ships at all."

"They have to have them. Even Papetoon isn't completely isolated," the vulpine replied.

"Yeah, I just assumed that they had none," the other girl replied sarcastically. "I was insinuating that they might not have a public port."

"That's impossible in a place this big. Most cities have public ports, even here. We just have to do this the hard way."

The avian made a sound halfway between a groan and a sigh. "Because you know from experience? You come here on vacation?"

" _Because_ while you were spending all of your time harassing the guards at the compound, I was attending lectures," the fox snapped, a bit loudly. "So yes, I know. And I know that Papetoon's primary provider is Corneria. This is a one-way ticket."

Resisting the impish urge to further debate the subject of the vixen's lesson attendance, the bird glanced around facetiously. "Is it invisible?"

" _Ari_."

The woman named Ari surrendered with a set of slumped shoulders and an exasperated stare. " _Fine_. Where do we go first? Or do we just amble around until a government jet skips up to us and says hello?"

" _You_ are sticking to the outskirts. I'm heading toward the city center."

Ari paused, the hesitation manifest in her expression. "You're actually going in?"

"What were you expecting?" the vulpine inquired incredulously, though her tone was soft.

"...Nothing. I wasn't thinking this far ahead," she admitted, glancing away.

The vixen turned away as well, shielding the troubled frown on her face. Their separation, even potentially brief, was difficult enough a task without verbal acknowledgement. "Keep your intercom on."

"You want to bother with that?" the bird queried wryly, a transparent attempt at resurrecting the previous atmosphere of flippancy.

"I need to have some sort of contact with you," the vixen answered flatly, rising to her full height. Ari followed suit after a roll of the eyes, standing two inches taller, though she was thinner in frame. Her heart still thrummed from the exhilaration of their flight, but even the pathetic cover of poverty's finest specimen managed to dull the sharp terror she'd experienced only minutes earlier. The slightest feeling of pain was present in her right shoulder and left ankle, the results of a crash landing. They didn't faze her in the slightest; her adrenaline wasn't just numbing the injuries. It was healing them.

No sooner did she walk ten feet before she heard a drawling call. "Ari."

"Hazel," she responded impishly. She turned just in time to catch the tense look on her companion's face fall into one of annoyance.

"Stay out of sight. Ninety percent of the people here are vulpine."

Ari cast a wary glance at the horizon in the direction they'd come from. There was no sign of anything in the sky, but it wouldn't be long. "No one is going to see me. I promise you that."

She ducked through a hole in the fence and ruffled the branches of a dead bush whose tendrils had been creeping through the empty spot. Her form ducked left, and she was no longer visible. A thick silence followed; the unfamiliar feeling of deliberate isolation sent a discomforting anxiety upward in the vixen's—Hazel's—stomach as she listened for the sound of receding footfalls. But she heard nothing.

Even her own labored breaths had lightened, and she was left alone in the yard of an anonymous mister or miss, waiting for nothing in particular as if her path were not being paved by her own hand. She took a step, knees protesting after their prolonged settlement amidst her earlier crouch. The stiffness went ignored, her eyes flitting to the lit buildings in the distance. She'd always wanted to see a real city, but the opportunity had never arisen and time now did not allow such a pleasantry. Then again, Token City had never been a place of interest to her. She'd been thinking Corneria City, or any place that didn't smell of urine. _That_ stench had hit her before she even reached the city fence.

She sighed ever so softly, gazing back down at the ramshackle house and pitiful gate. There had once been grass where she stood now, but it was long dead and in the process of being blanketed in warm sands. The soil muted her steps as she started off, but it wouldn't have made a difference, lest the scorched blades be uncovered. She met the gate hesitantly, eyes glancing curiously at the listless house it was attached to. She wondered what it looked like on the inside.

As a courtesy, she chose not to pry the destroyed handle off, frowning when she found that the peg required more of her assistance to be of use rather than the other way around. It was barely attached, and fell limp when she removed it from its latch. She'd pushed it forward expectantly, but when it didn't budge, she scowled. She could see that the soil at her feet compacted once more and rose on the other side, preventing the door from swinging outward. Repressing a huff, she rolled her eyes and yanked it toward her with her own irritation present in the motion.

The sound was deafening.

It was but a slight creak, but the sound reverberated off of the walls of the house and its neighbor. So shocked by it was she that Hazel instinctively ducked and backpedaled, as if the gate were an enemy whose swipe had only just missed. Overly tense and muscles contracting, she jerked forward and caught the door before it slammed shut, slithering between the boards and taking an extra, precious moment to ensure its closure was smothered. She turned immediately, and found herself facing a street that seemed to parallel the fence line, adorned with neglected and run-down houses and yards that were so closely situated that they emulated a set of overcrowded teeth. She wrinkled her nose in disgust, sidling up to the house for no specific reason other than to feel less exposed. There was an alley almost directly across from her, perhaps only three feet wide. The planks walling it were completely unaligned, though whether from poor craftsmanship or maintenance, she didn't know.

Casting a concentrated gaze about her surroundings twice, she scuttled from the shadow of the house's wall and into the street, shivering as she felt her own vulnerability. There was a slight chill pervading the air, whispering of a dangerously dry and merciless winter. She was thankful that she had not removed the sleeves of her shirt back on Titania, as Papetoon had just entered late autumn and was rapidly orbiting away from the system's center in a course that would take it past Venom at winter's peak. Papetoon was a desert world, but it was not always a warm desert world; it succumbed to freezing temperatures almost as formidable as its brutal summer heat.

In her ears she could have imagined the thrash of a drum when her vision was narrowed by the rickety fence boards of the alley. It was akin to entering a dungeon, feeling as though she was descending the steps of an obscure, drafty chamber to confront some unimaginable demon. The wood was dark with age, like scornful walls that kept her as a pet in an enclosure. She could have imagined the air becoming warm and humid and suffocating, could have imagined what dim blue light had crept over the area being snuffed out completely before it teasingly flickered back into existence. Then back off. Then back on.

Off. On. Off. On. Off.

She quickened her pace, vehemently shaking her head with eyes tightly shut for a brief moment. The feel of cold cement against her back and arms fought for control, a hallucination broken only by a slight breeze that kissed the fur on her cheeks. Somewhat shaken, her labored breaths returned in the form of anxiety. She gave a wide berth to a suspicious looking puddle of some thick, granular liquid that could have been a shade of brown, gagging on the stench. It was a welcome distraction from her haunting emotions and sensations, focusing her once again on the task at hand.

She met the alley's end, with pause, at another street, practically identical to the first. There was, naturally, a continuation of the isle across from her, which drew a fleeting sigh. A slump furthered itself in her shoulders. How long would it take to slither about Token City's shadows in search of any sort of vessel, and on her feet, nonetheless? She felt that assuming it possible to simply nose around and find passage onto a ship that would deliver her very literally at Corneria's doorstep was one hope short of infantile. And time was so precious—yet here she was, with no options aside. Perhaps her musings of luck had backfired; in reality, Papetoon had been a last resort improvisation, not a godsend. Had it not been for the unfortunate confrontation on Titania, she and Ari might've made it to Zoness.

Her ears pricked instantly at an ever-so-faint sound she likened to tearing paper. She glanced up to the sky, fear bubbling high in her throat as she slid down against the fence, which bowed with her weight. Her eyes flitted about rapidly, searching for the source. It could be one of two things, and she could only hold her breath in anticipation until it became evident which she was hearing. The sky held a brighter blue than before, Lylat timidly rising to host the heat of the autumn day. The ether was unblemished, not a cloud in sight. A pinprick far above slowly graced her vision, too far away for its features to be discernible. She could only guess that it was compact and jet-like, potentially a starfighter. And that was exactly what she _hadn't_ been hoping to see.

Fresh horror spiked in her stomach. They'd already found her.

* * *

"Hey, you catch that?" Falco inquired. The monitor set into Fox's dash displayed the bird's expression of perked interest clearly, his head craned to the side of his ship. The screen was split into two frames, one of which hosted Falco's camera as well as his own. It was typically separated into four frames, Slippy and Krystal included, but the two were still situated on the temporary mothership, online as well but waiting on the call for backup. Fox was hoping their mission would play out smoothly and quietly, and he'd mainly taken Falco with him on the abstract lead because he would potentially be rounding up two people. He'd also noticed that the avian had begun to act restless, a sign that often proceeded particularly insolent behavior and childish fits; the only remedies were missions and conflicts of a violent nature.

"No. You pick something up?"

"Yeah, a crash site. Light one," the bird responded, fighter disappearing from in front of Fox's cockpit view. Fox followed suit, pulling his Arwing into a wide and gentle arc. He directed it downward, the scanner on his right eye immediately locking onto a slight discoloration in the earth below. It zoomed in tremendously as he headed toward it, the lens filtering the image until it was visible. It looked to be a minute cargo ship—an exact replica of the one he'd seen back when Peppy had briefed them. A strange weight slid down his stomach as he slowed overhead and shifted downward, his Arwing smoothly closing the distance between it and the ground. Falco had already landed by the time Fox touched down, and had hopped onto the wing of his ship to draw his blaster, casting a cautious look about the area.

A hissing sound erupted as the latch to Fox's cockpit shield released. He grabbed a hold of the edge and leapt out, and like Falco, didn't bother with the ladder footrest accessory. Rather, he chose to simply bound from his wing to the ground, drawing his own gun. His body fell into a posture that was, at this point, second nature. He was about fifty meters from the crash site, and what he saw was a bit unnerving. The ship had an almost intangible line of smoke struggling from its rear beneath the door, and part of the plating appeared to have been seared off on the side he faced. He didn't spot an insignia or other indicator of a specific manufacturer or model. Up close, he didn't even recognize the general make of the thing. It seemed a bit old-fashioned, squared in the cargo hold and cone-shaped at the front; a very simple structure that had been discarded by almost every spacecraft designer in the system.

"Retro," he joked, eying it warily. Falco snorted and moved in, keeping within forty meters of Fox. They prowled along, scanners brightening their surroundings in response to the early morning dark. They were in the almost indiscernible shadow of Papetoon's sporadic hills and plateaus, the chilly breeze seeping through their clothes. Shivering, Fox recalled his last clear memory of the planet, when he was very young. It had been early summer, the hottest time of the year there, and he'd been playing in the front yard of a small, modest home of plain shapes and edges. He remembered a soft blanket with a white and red plaid pattern, and two mini toy hover cars clasped in each fist. He'd gotten up, tried to run around and make the blue one chase the red one as a hackneyed action story attempted to play out in his rapidly developing child mind. Naturally, he'd tripped up at the edge of the sidewalk and fallen. In doing so, he had instinctively put his hands out in front of him, successfully smashing the red car beneath his hand, as it had been in his right and most of his weight had gone that way. He'd had a pitiful fit, wailing and cradling the little toy in his hands like an injured butterfly. He distinctly remembered a soothing, familiar scent of vanilla washing over him just before two delicate hands plucked him from the ground, accompanied by a sympathetic coo. His mother had sat down at the edge of the lawn and pulled him into her lap, gently coaxing him into her arms and consoling him in his distressed state. He'd looked up, met the same pair of kind emerald orbs that he himself possessed, and settled into a troubled sniffle as she tenderly murmured all the sweet nothings a mother was meant to.

"James," she'd called over her shoulder, stroking the white fluff on Fox's head.

A vulpine man, shaded a bit by the sun at his back yet still a comforting sight, had quickly approached from behind her. Fox recalled peeking over her shoulder and wriggling a bit to free his right arm, shoving his hand in the air around the side of her neck in order to display to the man his dilemma. There had been a pause, then a light chuckle, and the woman released him, allowing the little vulpine to scramble over to his father. Steeled hands, kind and tame when they touched him, lifted Fox up and propped his hip against a broad chest. The memory became distorted and fuzzy from then on out, the image of blue eyes and an amused grin on his father's face all that was clear after that. He did remember hearing something about the super glue running out and a temporary fix until they replaced it; but Fox had grown up with two toy cars, one blue and intact, and the other red with a bent roof as well as a bumper and windshield that had been taped on. It never did get glued.

All he saw now was a cargo hold in complete disrepair. "Looks like whoever was on this thing hit rough water," Falco remarked flatly, angling his body away from Fox and circling the ship at a distance.

"It _looks like_ Peppy was right. This is definitely the same ship from Titania," Fox replied. "And this was recent. They're still in the area. ROB, run another scan. They couldn't have gotten far."

"Affirmative. Scanning," came the monotone voice of the A.I. through the headset piece tucked below Fox's ear. He continued to move in, scrutinizing the pitiful ship. Near the cockpit was the faint line of a rectangular plate with rounded edges, something he knew to be designated as a standard emergency exit; obviously, it was useless past the atmosphere's perimeter lest the ship's occupants be suited accordingly, and stood as an escape system only in orbital flight and in situations such as the one laid out before Fox at that very moment. It had remained untouched, and judging by the way the ship had created a crater, as well as its skyward left side and half-buried right side, he assumed the typical door had been wedged against the earth or otherwise jammed and mutilated in the collision. His blaster traced a line across its width, ending at the rear door, which had clearly been pried open from the inside. A disbelieving grunt escaped him, the sight giving him pause. He glanced back to the untouched and immaculate hatch, then once more at the door.

He proceeded forward until he was a bare ten feet from the ship, and as general precaution,made to call out to ensure there was no one inside. However, Falco beat him to it. "If anybody's in there, come out with your hands in the air, or I'll blast your ass."

They were met with the expected silence, and Fox's ferocious glower went ignored as they continued until they stood at either corner of the craft's hull. It lay at an angle, forcing Falco to clamber up the dune that had been created to reach the other side of the orifice. Fox crouched at its edge, nodding at the bird as he dropped in on the other side, feet nearly at the vulpine's eye level. The sand around it looked to have poured back into the long crater trail it had made, Falco's boots staggered on the mound adjacent to the ship's hull. Fox motioned for the bird stay put, tenderly casting a glance inside through the opening, which was roughly a foot and a half from the floor to the door's edge. Something of an uncomfortable fit for most full grown men, but certainly feasible for a healthy woman or adolescent.

Inside, darkness reigned, Fox's scanner adjusting. The compartment was empty save for an empty sack on the floor and a thin layer of grain near Falco's corner that appeared to have slithered in, likely when the door had been opened, and the cockpit was visible only due to a second door that had been pried open as well. He allowed a puffing sound to snake between his chops, eyes and head twitching in bafflement. Glancing at Falco, he dared to take leisure in assuming their total isolation and asked, "Door buried on your side?"

"Pretty much," Falco answered, resuming his typical air of chilled nonchalance.

"Then help me with this," the vulpine replied, nodding at the aperture that had been created.

The bird imitated Fox's form as he wedged his shoulder under the gate, and at an agreeing glance, began to push upward. The thing stuck at first, particularly due to Falco's awkward angle, but even as they gradually forced it upward, Fox found that not the faintest whisper pervaded his ear. There was no protesting noise, no grinding, no squeal of age. Every time his shoulder knocked the door up a bit more, he heard the expected sound in his own head as if it could fill the absence in the exterior world. A muted and perplexed-sounding curse reached his ears, and he stole a look toward Falco, who stared at the center of the door's edge, near the handle. The yawning gap now stood three feet high, allowing Fox to clamber in on steady feet despite the slanted floor. No echo followed the sound of his feet and hands propelling him into the cabin, which was hardly more than ten feet in length and eight in width. He glanced up, finding an unblemished ceiling; there was a faint circular line he managed to descry, but that was all it was. It appeared that it may have at one point been another hatch.

"Yo. Fox," Falco said. Fox twisted his head back and found the avian still scrutinizing the handle of the gate. He had moved closer to it and was leaning into his right knee, his left foot wedged in the earth's incline below him. "There're prints here. Indents."

"Indents?" he echoed distractedly, glancing around as he turned back to the opening. He took a few cautious steps back to the door again, but before he could respond, something caught his eye. At the bottom of the door there was a handle, identical to the one on the outside in design. However, it had been mangled, one side having been severed from the door and pointed skyward. The bar was molded into a wavering, twisted line, as if someone's fist had too tightly gripped it. Below the handle, there were four small niches at bottom of the door, and upon closer inspection Fox additionally found a set of two prints roughly an inch higher and set outside the original four.

"Maybe the lock system is out of date," Fox suggested. "This thing is old."

"Then they would've used the emergency exit. Makes even less sense that they would try to pry this thing open if the mechanics stuck," Falco disclosed dubiously and with a slight tone of irritation. "They'd have to be brain-dead."

"Ignorant or poorly informed, maybe," Fox suggested.

"What? They didn't know what an emergency hatch was? Bullshit," Falco sneered. "They're idiots. It's decided."

Fox didn't acknowledge the last bit. He held stalwart doubts toward idiocy being the case. "I'm checking the manual overrides. Maybe it'll clear this up a bit." Turning back, he headed toward the cockpit, still unnerved by the lack of sound reverberation. He scanned the small compartment warily, creeping in and gazing around. There was a disturbing familiarity to it, the controls contrasting sharply with his vision of the ship; they were sleek and new, colored brightly even, and there was little in the way of protrusions. There were only a few large buttons, the one nearest to him looking particularly bulbous and isolated, as if for special use. The chairs oddly boasted a luminescent microfiber material, pale grey and so soft-looking that Fox felt the urge to stroke it. Frowning, he glanced up at the ceiling panels, scrutinizing them. Spotting a rectangular compartment above the dashboard's center with its front pane hanging down, he holstered his blaster and placed his hands on either side of it, studying the switches inside. Three had been moved from the left to the right, pointing toward tiny green circles that Fox knew all signaled individual overrides.

"System malfunction," Fox called amusedly over his shoulder. "All the doors were unlocked. Looks like a mechanical issue after all."

He heard a disgruntled mutter from Falco following his sarcastic disclosure. He hardly got to enjoy it, though, as Slippy's voice abruptly sounded through the transceiver. "Fox! ROB didn't find anybody around the area, but he did find a weird energy signal nearby, like a trail or something...I can't tell what it is yet, but it's northeast of you guys. It's right on the border of Token City, and it's moving."

"A trail?" Fox echoed, pressing his headset's transmitter button and perking up.

"Yeah, but as it progresses, the tail disappears. The trail's range is only a kilometer in length from the beacon point."

"Is it some kind of distress signal?" he inquired curiously. He felt antsy simply standing there scrutinizing a cockpit that failed to otherwise be telling. It looked as undisturbed as a crashed ship could be, save for the overrides.

"No, like I said, I don't know what it is, and neither does ROB. He's kinda saying there's something...weird about it. It's not a ship or an actual beacon. It's just...there," Slippy responded, with meek finality.

"Then let's go," Falco interjected roughly. His voice over the intercom muddled with his real one, making it sound to Fox as though they were in a cavernous tunnel. "We're wasting time. There's nothing here."

"Point taken," Fox grumbled, turning around. As he did so, his tail brushed over the tip of the dashboard and was met with an instantaneous sharp pain, as if something had clamped shut on it. He released a bark of surprise, wheeling around with blaster pointed in that direction as he freed the tip of his tail. At the edge of the panel, where the large, solitary button had been, sat a protruding insect-like device, roughly the size of Fox's hand and adorned with six metallic legs, two of which were raised in the air and pointed in his direction. Its body was but a circular disk ringed with green light that pooled around its legs, and it seemed almost poised to attack.

Though a perplexed curse was tickling his tongue, Fox said nothing at first. He stood still for a moment, eying the unfamiliar little machine. It reminded him of two things; the Aparoids, and the arachnid-shaped droids Andross had engineered during the war. But it was tiny, and had it not pinched his tail, he might've snickered at the position it now sat in.

He attempted the slightest of movements with his right leg, intending a cautious step backward, but the second his muscles twitched, the bot reared up higher, chillingly swaying and curling its front legs in a vertical motion. He couldn't imagine what it could possibly do to hurt him—lest it suddenly boast a built-in mini laser cannon—but if it was innocuous, he wasn't about to leave it be.

"Hey, move your ass, Foxy!" Falco snapped, the ship softly swaying as if the bird had climbed in. The little droid leapt instantly, drawing a shocked blanch from Fox as it propelled through the air directly toward his eyes. He instinctively raised his gun as it did so, but managed to resist the trigger and swat the thing in an upward motion with the barrel instead. It rebounded off of the ceiling, shooting to the floor almost too quickly for Fox to see as he struggled to follow its path with his eyes. He turned and fired then, unwilling to risk losing it even as scrap and unsure of whether or not he had really just seen a flurry of pointed legs disappear past the threshold. He took several long strides after it, and halted in the middle of the cargo hold just as a booted foot slammed down on the droid immediately in front of the door. Glancing up, Fox caught the expression of revulsion that had graced Falco's face as he watched it continue to squirm underneath him.

"Don't squish it," Fox blurted hastily, failing to conjure a better command. Falco's foot had just begun to press down further, but he paused to meet Fox's eyes. Without disclosing his incentive, Fox spoke again, holding the transceiver. "Slip. We've got something for you."

"Huh?"

"It's a droid," he responded, taking two steps forward to crouch and scrutinize the disk-shaped insect as it wriggled below Falco's foot. He was regretting leaving his P.D.A behind; he hadn't had much use for it since Sauria, as his on-ground missions during the Aparoid conflict had been so physically engaging that it had essentially been a pointless accessory. He could have scanned the insect and sent the data to ROB, but he'd not given the device the slightest thought up to that point. In retrospect, he found that his failure to consider it was due more to a lack of appreciation than other factors—including his poor night's sleep.

"How about I just kill it instead?" Falco suggested disgustedly.

"Wait—a droid? Don't _kill_ it! Be careful with it, Fox!"

"...Yeah," the vulpine replied, repressing a flat tone of voice and frowning as the little bot squirmed.

"And—wait a sec. Don't do anything with it yet! We're getting a call from Peppy!" Slippy exclaimed urgently, a shuffling noise emanating from the speaker. "I'll patch him through."

Fox perked up at that. "Great timing."

There was a pause on the line, and a few seconds later Peppy's rather loud voice jarred Fox's ears. He flinched, Falco's eye lids innately twitching for the same reason. "Hello? Hello? Fox?"

"Yeah."

"Keep it down, will ya?" Falco barked, foot involuntarily pushing down further on the droid, which, in response, squirmed more fiercely.

Ignoring the biting demand, Peppy continued, "I've got new information for the lot of you, but I've also got a little bad news."

"Always," Fox replied with mock enthusiasm. "Let's hear it."

"Papetoon's fleet admiral just informed me per my request that two unidentified spacecraft entered orbit within the last several hours. The first was reported to have landed right outside the southernmost edge of Token City, and the other they managed to lose track of," Peppy grunted. "The first was allegedly an old cargo carrier, but the second apparently looked to be a spacecraft carrier unaffiliated with Corneria or Papetoon's navies."

Fox and Falco exchanged a dark look. "When did they lose track of the carrier?" the vulpine inquired.

"About fifteen minutes before the first landed. Apparently systems went down before either ship entered orbit, so they were watching them directly. Another inconvenient anomaly to counter our efforts," Peppy added grouchily.

"Maybe the system failure wasn't coincidence," Fox remarked. "Granted, I couldn't suggest any specifics. You thinking the unaffiliated carrier comes from the same place the fighters on Titania did?"

"I'm not thinking anything yet. I'm just getting you whatever information I can scrape up," Peppy admitted. "But that would be my first guess, and it could spell trouble for you lot if its occupants are after our Titania suspect—suspects, I suppose. You may very well intercept them."

"It's a possibility," Fox remarked absently. "We found the cargo ship. It's definitely a match to the images you showed us, and it's been recently abandoned. But I just...found...a live droid."

"A droid? What kind of droid?"

"Don't know yet," Fox answered hesitantly. "I haven't seen this before, but...it looks like a land-based scout pod."

Peppy's voice was taut. "Aggressive? Did you engage?"

"No. It's small—miniature, even. Definitely for recon," Fox replied.

"And it hasn't attacked you?"

Fox paused, then responded rather wryly, "It wasn't happy to see me, but I think it's harmless for the most part."

"Good," the hare replied suddenly. "Bring it back with you."

Falco's revolted grimace deepened as he glanced back down at the insect beneath his foot. Its squirming had noticeably abated, and its legs had slackened under the pressure of his weight. "I still say we kill it," he muttered.

Fox sent the bird a disapproving look as he mulled it over. Letting Slippy have a look at it was far from a bad idea, but he was experiencing the familiar feeling of obligation to an unknown cause. He'd not the slightest clue where the droid had been manufactured, and while he figured Macbeth was a possibility, sense told him he would've seen it before. Moreover, there was an ominous aura to it that Andross' creations hadn't radiated, present even in its design. The shell and legs were blacker than he thought metal could be, and the green light was both sickly and alluring. It raised the hair on the back of his neck thinking about it. Instinct told him it didn't come from Andross, and Fox knew that if Slippy or the defense force managed to analyze it, conflict was bound to arise. Still, he relented, inclination driving him ever forward. "Slip, can you get this thing by transfer?" he asked.

"Heck no. Not worth it. We could lose it," Slippy replied bluntly.

"Lose it?" Peppy echoed incredulously.

Fox scrunched his face in vexation. "Is there something wrong with the transfer tool?"

The frog faltered for a moment. "Not exactly..."

"Don't tell me we don't have one?" Falco demanded heatedly.

"We do—but this ship is older, and the technology is, too. There's a limit to what kinds of things we can transfer, even with ROB. And we can't pick anything up," Slippy disclosed tentatively.

A hard laugh burst from Falco's beak. Glancing up, Fox noticed his clenched jaw, the way his feathered fingers were tightly gripping his blaster. "That's a hoot. Save the entire fucking system a couple hundred times, and when your insurance doesn't cover shit, you're rewarded with more shit."

"I'm obligated to remind you, Falco," Peppy interjected with an undertone of irony, "that you're in the middle of a live transmission with the General of the Cornerian Army. But I'll let it slide."

Unfortunately, Fox could hardly disagree with the bird in that moment. There was little else in the universe that frustrated him as much as his own tied hands. With a heavy sigh and buzzing mind, he suggested, "Then there are two choices. Either we keep going and bring it back later, or you fly down here and pick it up, Slip."

"Er...or Krystal," Slippy offered awkwardly. "She's just kinda hanging out right now."

It was Fox's turn to clench his jaw. He couldn't help but entertain ridiculous thoughts of the little bot under Falco's foot attacking Krystal in the cockpit of her Arwing—and couldn't help but irrationally doubt her. It was an incredibly simple task, something the team had come to coin as "grocery shopping", but the murky depth of the ulterior situation left him with a slight paranoia nonetheless. Moreover, it wouldn't make sense to say no to the suggestion, particularly considering the fact that Krystal would be hearing everything from the ship.

"...Right," he conceded. "She there?"

"Yes," a lilted voice answered pleasantly. "I have been for a bit."

Falco peered down at Fox puckishly. "You ever been with a girl that snoops?" he asked snidely.

Fox made a rude gesture with his finger in response. Falco grinned and remarked, "Worst kind."

"Alright, Krystal," Fox said agitatedly, the fur at his nape rising as his body experienced a noticeable increase in temperature. "I want you to head down here and grab this thing. Falco's going to wait for you."

"What?" the bird snapped, recoiling.

"Is there need for that?" she inquired evenly.

Observing the particular loss of emotion in her tone, Fox's ears drooped a bit, and he suppressed a pained grunt. "It's not a safety precaution," he explained. It wasn't completely a lie. "This thing is live. I don't want to try deactivating or disarming it and risk any issues for Slippy to deal with. And I can't leave it here unattended."

"Shouldn't it be your job to escort your girlfriend?" Falco grouched venomously. He made a point of hitting the transmitter button as he did so, birthing an added pit of heat in Fox's face. The vulpine stood, eying Falco with a promise of something short of murder.

" _Let me know_ ," Peppy inserted, with impatient emphasis, "when you obtain any new information, or better yet, find our runaways. Fox, you and the team have permission to land at the ship port in Token City. It'll be just west of the interplanetary trade center on the city's northern edge. You'll meet Papetoon's Lieutenant General of the army there. He's been cleared to assist you in the search. Good luck."

"Guys, I think we should get moving," Slippy suggested immediately following Peppy's withdrawal. "Sun's getting higher and that energy trail is getting further and further away by the second."

"The answer to your question, Falco," Fox began pointedly, pressing his own transmitter again, "Is that we've already lost precious time. And as team leader, I think it's safe to say it should be my job to get the head start between the two of us."

After a tense moment in which Falco's lower beak shifted slightly to the side and he glared down at the vulpine, he replied, both hands on his gun. "Tch. You're that pissed over a little joke?"

"Don't have the energy for that today," Fox answered lowly. Holstering his blaster, he made for the door, rounding Falco and swooping under the gate to stand on the outcropping with a hand grasping the jutting corner and the other on his headset. "Krystal, come on down."

* * *

Token City's bustle was suffocating. The sun had hardly graced the sky before Hazel began to notice denizens traversing the streets, people leaving their homes in the ramshackle neighborhood she'd dropped into. At first, there had been few enough that she managed to give each a wide berth, tugging her shirt collar up and attempting to veil the headset around her neck by loosening her braid until it was barely holding (she might've unwound it completely had it not been so greasy and unkempt). However, as she left the suburban district and headed inward, she entered an entirely different area, where she was greeted by crowds that thickened exponentially with every street she crossed. She'd not seen anything of Token City's caliber before; at the compound, she'd avoided heavily trafficked and communal areas. And most of the people she had seen had been soldiers, trained and "conditioned", men and women who labored about like possessed dolls. They'd moved like automatons, the eyes of each individual cold and calculating, not a glimmer of any form of passion to be offered, ever. Just one more unworldly thing Enzo had engineered.

Eventually she found that there was not a moment when some part of her body failed to meet another's. It was at this time that the anxiety that swelled in her throat caused her to gag, and she made quite a scene of ripping at fabrics and fur to escape the thicket. She was panting heavily, eyes darting about as they raced over street vendors and faded shops until they landed on a minuscule alley. At the dismayed shouts and grumbles that echoed around her, she dove into it, stumbling as she gasped for breath. Her momentum carried her forward a few steps, and she fell into a crouch, balancing herself with hands placed on the ground along either knee. She continued to pant, regaining what focus and control she could as confused murmurs passed her by on the sidewalk. Ignoring them, she bit down on a malicious laugh, spiteful of her humiliating lack of composure. Ineptitude was something she'd come to expect in the time allowed for such musings, but she failed even to hide it. In addition, she'd ironically just sought out sanctuary in a setting similar to the one that had made her claustrophobic earlier that morning. Maybe inept wasn't the right fit. Maybe hysterical. Although it didn't much matter.

She slid onto her hip after she'd managed to regulate her respiratory system, swiveling and pushing back against the alley wall. A glance to her left revealed passerby drifting to and fro from her perspective in the isle, a few glancing over in surprise at her proximity to the sidewalk. Most ignored her, though, and she preferred it that way, even shuffling a bit further from alley's mouth. The dried, compressed earth felt as sturdy as cement, and below her fingers was coated in a thin layer of grain. It was even more so on the exposed sidewalk, and the observation drew her eyes to what bit of road she could descry. It was teeming with people, and a pungent, sour scent saturated the air, like that of harmful pollutants excreted from unrefined machinery.

She knew what was missing from the picture before her. Hazel had never seen a standard hovercar—at least, not one for mundane use. The realization that she'd been expecting them enveloped her, and after a moment, she attributed the lack thereof to the fact that she was still in what she assumed was a low-income district. They should have still been present, but the crowds would have rendered vehicular travel cumbersome, even by hovercraft, considering the lack of space to land. Reckoning that the inner city heralded the wealthy and their cars was the only fathomable answer to the lack of vehicles; moreover, at the very least, the city's outer rim and lower class areas likely neither hosted on-ground or aerial traffic functions. The overall analysis made Hazel feel uncomfortably ignorant, and gave rise to her ever-present feelings of resentment toward Enzo and his system—his empire. Perhaps such simple-sounding things should have been innate knowledge to her. With overwhelming bitterness, she mused that she was even less than the child she'd been two decades ago, when she still lived in this free world. She only emulated the norms that Abraham, her once unofficial teacher of sorts, had followed, as she couldn't remember what they had been before. Often did solemn reflections cross her mind in which she acknowledged seven as an age at which children would naturally and subconsciously cling to cultural and societal standards, but she'd lost it all. If there was great normalcy in her, it was only thanks to Abraham. And she hadn't seen him in quite some time.

With the shadow still present in the alley's maw, Hazel found it difficult to convince herself to rise and return to the streets. There sat a voice in her head which whispered that each and every pedestrian knew her, knew who she was and what she was running from, and that they were all scheming against her. Hardly more than a half an hour had passed since she and Ari landed at the metropolis's edge, and she'd already caved. There was a natural ease in feigning competence with a dependent at her side; on that note, she supposed it was worth contacting the bird, her paranoia conjuring a plethora of scenarios that agitated her further. She got to her feet and headed further down the alley, aware of how suspicious she would likely appear. It was her intention to leave the area as quickly as possible, of course, but she felt an old, natural fear of moving, being caught. Part of her wanted to stay put, hope the fighter in the sky was a loner and unaffiliated with Enzo, but the other part of her—the aggressive, stubborn part—refused to cower. Scanning her rather dreary surroundings, including the rooftops, dilapidated back doors, and dirty windows, she groped for her headset, temperamentally ripping at her tangled hair as her fingers caught in it. Settling behind a trash compacter, she carelessly arranged it on her head, glaring up at what she could see of the sky as she brought the mic up to its proper place. The set was old, the brother of Ari's and once a toy the two girls had used to wreak no end of guileless havoc on Enzo's compound. Complications forced them to abruptly put the pair of intercoms away permanently, but in recent years and predating their escape, they'd remembered them for less ingenuous purposes.

She swiped a finger gently over a minute, circular pad behind the microphone extension, aware of the danger she was putting herself in by using the tool. It transmitted on a much lower frequency than those generally monitored and used at the compound, and she was far from Venom, anyway, but since she was being followed, the risk was still immense. She knew she should have tossed the headset the moment she landed on Titania, but she hadn't, and neither had Ari. Their pursuers would be waiting for their utilization of the radio, and even if they missed her transmission, Hazel feared alternative methods Enzo's forces could use to find the both of them. She hadn't yet figured out how his men had so rapidly found them on Titania, but seeing as there was yet another nearby starfighter presumably on the hunt, she hoped dearly that they'd managed to tag the ship she and Ari were using and were not relying on some other unknown form of tracking.

"...Ari," she said, the sound of her voice jarring to her own ears. She'd not heard it since she entered the city, and she noted that she sounded hoarse. She worried briefly that her body would begin to recoil from overexertion, but her race through the wastelands couldn't have put the necessary level of strain on her that would cause a setback. She'd not dropped an ounce of blood and had barely relied on an extra, unnatural kick.

But the day was young, the hunt ongoing, and the line heavy with static.

She waited a moment, telling herself that the bird was being her absent-minded self and simply didn't hear her. Hazel said the other girl's name again, and once more after a tense few moments, but there was no response.

She knew there was no point in waiting for an answer, that the bird wasn't just oblivious. She just...knew.

Realizing the convenient placement of the trash compacter beside her, Hazel shot to her feet, scanning the machine beside her for a monitor. Rather, she found a simple control pad with a set of commands aside large buttons. She hit the first, which popped the lid of the compacter with a loud hiss that blew vile air into her nostrils. Wincing in disgust, she tore the headset from her neck and moved to drop it in a short bin with a grated tray that still held bits of scrap and food in its tiny rings, below which was likely where the remnants went. She'd expected laser usage, but it looked to be an older technology that simply cut and compressed everything.

"Hello? Hello?"

Hazel's body froze, but her head craned around, eyes searching wildly for the source of the sound. It took her a moment to comprehend that it had in fact come from the radio, as was evident by the slight grain in the voice. She glanced down at the thing in her hand as if it were a demonic instrument, shock rippling within her.

There was an ensuing laugh, almost as if it were mocking her. "No answer. Wonder if she can hear us."

She brought it back to her head, listening intently with an ear pressed to it, but the voice was notably quieter and more distant. There was a second even further in the background that was nearly unintelligible, aside from a few hissed words that her canine ears picked up on.

" _Idiot_... _up_... _surprise_...doesn't matter...friend probably already warned her."

She didn't recognize either voice, and following the muted conversation, there was only clatter. Resolute, she tossed the headset into the bin and manually closed the lid, hitting the start button and tearing off in the opposite direction of the street as the machine rumbled to life. She stepped into a four-way split, the isles to her left and right notably thinner than the other two. The far end of the left hosted a six-foot chain fence, and though she'd intended to go straight, anyway, she acknowledged the fact that going right would take her in the direction she'd come from. She thought of Ari with agonizing anxiety; either they'd caught her, or they hadn't, but the man on the intercom gave her little hope. Hazel didn't know where she would have been, and she couldn't be of much use if she did. Heading in the direction she'd sent the bird could be as poor a choice as any, and sense told her that her best bet was to continue without her friend in hopes that she could hail help and return for her. But she didn't know in what form help would come, unsure of what to expect of Corneria should she ask for asylum. Even worse, she fretted what punishments might be dealt to her friend if she had really been caught.

Instinct prompted her eyes to the sky, then over her shoulder as she made her way, body fluid yet coiled. _You're prowling_ , Abraham had once said when she was young—perhaps ten—as the simian man looked on in amusement. The memory was fuzzy, but she vaguely remembered playing hide-and-seek-tag, the essence of innocence and youth still present. The notion invoked fleeting nostalgia, only for it to be followed by sudden dread. A more recent paralleling memory came to mind in turn, but it was clear, Abraham's expression devastated as she stood shivering over ten mangled bodies beneath a Fortuna downpour. A result of bad behavior and misconduct, a punishment that she could have chosen to sit aside from. He hadn't needed to say it. _You're prowling_.

She reached the alley's mouth, pausing just a few feet back from the opening and dispersing the memory. The bustling street in front of her appeared identical to the one she'd crossed from. The sound of a shuffle reached her ears, and a stolen glance backward offered a view of two inconspicuous canines chuckling as they rounded the corner and stepped into the alley. They were dressed like many of the other denizens she'd seen—cloth shirts and pants, the one on the left adorned with a poncho. The one without was clearly full vulpine, brown of fur and seemingly oblivious to her presence as he exchanged words with the man next to him. The man in the poncho, however, was a burly lupine, and his amused grin was wicked rather than mirthful. He walked in a way that sent a shiver racing down Hazel's back, every wrinkle in his mantle so concealing that instinct screamed that what lay below promised her no fortune, and there was motive in the way his shoulders were set...like he'd found his prey. As if he didn't need to see her to know she was there.

So she was too late. Time had run out. They'd found her, and they'd probably found Ari. With a great deal of heavy acceptance, she didn't bother to look away. He must have realized this, as he turned to meet her gaze directly then, and she let the malice beneath her fear seep into her expression, just for him. A dark nature established itself there, in that moment, and primal intuition suggested that a frigid relationship had just formed. Hazel had not seen this man before, and a vague sense told her that he was a new addition to Enzo's ensemble. That in itself proposed the immense danger of the scenario, as well as the extent of the man's competence.

She had only exchanged a glare with him for but a couple seconds, but it was entirely too long. Her message, audacious as it was, had been sent and received, as made evident by the intangible but palpable flicker in the atmosphere. When the lupine moved his arm, there was an unnatural shape that became visible where his hips and thighs should have been, and the vixen was among the crowd in an instant. Attempting to keep low, Hazel merged with the mass, then weaved upward through the crowd, continuing her journey toward the city center with greater urgency and a sense of bitter determination instead of desperation.

She flinched and halted, however, when the blare of horns screamed in her ears. Her body seized with tension, and those around her slowed or craned their heads, a few recoiling as well at the abrasive sound. She glanced back to the alley, seeing nothing and sparing little effort to scrutinize it as she lurched forward again, rashly clawing at the people that were unfortunate enough to near her. There were muted shouts up ahead, the sound of slamming doors and miscellaneous racket that made her waver, but she decided that whatever was ahead may be favorable and sped up. Rather quickly, though, she found that she was running into more still bodies than moving ones. After a few tense moments in which she nudged about, casting glances backward while those about her progressively slowed down, the crowd halted its forward motion completely. Its occupants instead muttered amongst themselves, shuffling and peering over one another's shoulders. Hazel heard the shouting of a singular voice nearby, but she couldn't decipher the words because all those around her were contributing to the general murmur. It appeared that there might have been an intersection directly ahead, but her modest height prevented any validation.

Sinking a bit lower, she turned her gaze back again, searching for the large canine. Already she was trying to burn his features into her memory, specifically those he couldn't hide. There had been grey fur with white accents—the muzzle and perhaps a tuft, or some variant of it—as well as considerable height, even for a lupine. Judging by his general stature, even regarding what he may have donned below his cloak, he was thickly built and probably in fair shape. He was not young, and if he was aging, it wasn't overly prominent at a glance. His eyes had been bright, luminescent, almost, but the color was lost on her. There had been something off about one of the them...a separate color? Murky with blindness? Scarred? She hadn't scrutinized him, so the answer never presented itself.

She continued to peer at the alley, but she was suddenly jostled and, when she turned around again, a soldier was shoving her aside, closely followed by a second. Her heart reared at the sight of a uniformed man holding a gun, but the two men kept moving, and they cut through the crowd toward the shops lining the sidewalk. More and more emerged from the nooks formed between individuals ahead and poured into the shops around her, none ever appearing to offer the slightest sign that they noticed her in particular. Several paused to direct the crowd, ushering them by raising and dropping their hands whilst harshly commanding them to get down. People began to drop, some rather quickly and with slight panic, and others more slowly with resentment or confusion. They settled on their knees or sat, but they were still being managed, most hesitantly putting their hands to the backs of their heads and shrinking fearfully from the troops. As she followed suit, trying to appear scared (which was not a difficult task given her situation), past the lowered heads of numerous vulpines and the occasional dog there sat the top half of a black van, one of the doors on the side open to reveal a pair of men stepping out. She couldn't tell with her poor line of sight, but she assumed it was hovercraft and military-issue, and that there would be more around it. She might've been intrigued by it if not for the inopportune timing.

Her eyes fell back on the alley she'd darted from, and she searched the bodies behind her when she found that nobody was exiting it. The wolf would have stood out, even sitting, but the abundance of people was incredibly dense. The likelihood that the chaos had concealed him was great, but for all she knew, he was still in the alley and had seized the opportunity to regroup with whoever he may be there with. That could just be the man that was with him, but she doubted it. It made her restless, knowing that she was incapable of putting distance between him and herself and that at any moment she could be surrounded by the kind of uniforms that had initially come to mind when she'd seen the soldiers appear.

She scanned frantically for any sign of him; it could have been comforting to think that the militant interruption could provide her time and temporary safety, but she was only just then beginning to comprehend that they may very well be looking for her as well. They must have known of her and Ari's landing, but the vixen admittedly hadn't expected much retaliation due to her shaded opinion of the city. Nevertheless, its forces would undoubtedly pale in comparison to Enzo's should he decide that Hazel and Ari are worth the ruckus.

Her thoughts were abruptly halted as she heard footsteps scrape the ground near her. Swiveling back, her eyes met the legs of another soldier who now towered over her. He donned a helmet which had a clear visor, and she could see his blue eyes and coppery fur through it. A second man behind him held a gun but pointed the end at the ground beside them. "Present your identification and proof of citizenship," the first commanded.

Of course she'd no idea what that truly was. She'd heard of such things, yes, but had yet to physically see either. Now, she could lie, and feign that she'd left them at home—lest that be something abnormal that would warrant attention—or deal with whatever consequences may befall her otherwise. Lying would put her in the same position, eventually, but would it be so bad? She would likely be safe from the man in the alley, for the moment, and she could manage a way to plead her case without sounding completely insane. The only matter was trusting an independent government such as Papetoon's to get her message to Corneria, and trusting its ability to protect her from Enzo in the time between.

" _Now_ ," the soldier demanded sharply, tensing.

"I—" she tried to breathe, sweat seeping through her fur as the sun climbed higher and glared down on the city. Only just stifling her pathetic babbling, she furtively swallowed the knot in her throat and successfully managed to remember her pride for stability. With sudden calm, she answered, "I don't have either with me." Merely the insinuation of a lie, in her mind.

The man roughly snatched her arm, an act which nearly brought her free fist to his visor. She inhaled deeply as he hauled her up, and those around her were jarred by the motion in the tight space. Her feet didn't fail her, though, and she rose without a stumble, teeth clenched in irritation. She let the man tug her through the sea of sitting people, and she noticed several other uniform-clad men approaching the grumbling and scared citizens. Echoes of the same demand the soldier next to her had made seemed to rebound about her head, the cacophony of voices igniting her anxiety as soon as she had quelled it. Various shouts from several directions added to the pandemonium, her body going taut like that of frightened prey's as the vulpine troop pulled her to the front of the breathing thicket.

"Sir," she heard the man beside her say. She looked forward, catching sight of the hovering black van in full view, which was surrounded by several others that had taken up the intersection. Hundreds of other citizens were cramped into the same positions those around her were, and the crowds had been split down either perpendicular road where the vehicles sat, crawling with soldiers. In front of the nearest vehicle stood a somewhat tall vulpine, between youth and age and a bit on the attractive side. His fur was a charcoal color with bits of grey on his muzzle, eyebrows and ears, and his eyes were a hard, flat blue. He donned similar military gear to the men that stepped out behind him, minus the helmet and larger guns, and flashes of medal at his chest caught Hazel's eye. He'd just stepped out of the car, and two soldiers, heavily armored, clambered out behind him. There was a fourth, but he was halfway out and balancing on one leg whilst seemingly saying something to who she assumed was the driver; he slowly lowered his left foot to the ground, nodding and turning away with a dry smirk and an aloof gaze. Fully emerged, he instantly stood out from the men near him, adorned with a green suit and off-white jacket, as well as a belt, silver boots, black gloves, and a red bandana that lay round his neck. A gun, which she sardonically recognized as a blaster, was strapped to his right leg. He also wore a headset that shamed the one she'd been using earlier and which heralded a transparent, green-tinted plate that looked to slide down over the right eye. His fur was a soft yellow-orange with white accents, and even with his gaze elsewhere, she noticed the brilliant emerald color of his irises. He couldn't have been much older than her.

"Sir," the soldier repeated, a bit louder as Hazel found that there were no bodies left to brush her legs and tail. Standing about ten meters from the car, she and the dark vulpine glanced up simultaneously, but his eyes were on the soldier next to her, and hers flickered back to the man in the green suit. His eyes had narrowed and gone to the rooftops, which he studied intently, pausing mid-step to scrutinize them.

"Caught a heathen?" the uniformed man remarked informally, expression even and tone derisive.

Hazel practically felt the trepidation from the man next to her at the inquiry. She frowned in slight surprise, until she was yanked forward and upright to stand before the military leader. With pointed annoyance, she eyed the soldier and used her free hand to brush a strand of hair out of her eyes as he responded, "Sir, this woman failed to present identification and proof of citizenship. She claims not to possess either."

"On me," she added lowly. His fingertips dug into her arm, and he shook her slightly.

"Seems to be the issue today," the other man snorted, gazing off behind her. She turned to look, but was once again jostled forward at the attempt. After his eyes settled on her again, he asked impassively, "Why is that?"

He phrased it as a general address, as if there might be others in the same situation standing behind her—and there might have been. Taking note of what expression and form of body language she'd fallen into, she slumped innocently and offered earnest eyes. "I left them both in my bag, and my friend has it."

The man, who she then mentally addressed as Arden upon seeing his name placard, seemed to suppress an exasperated sigh. He turned back to the vulpine in the green suit, whom was still being occupied by the sight of the roofs, though he'd switched to the opposite string of buildings. "You said avian, yes?"

After a beat, the addressee glanced down at him. The mention of "avian" sent a serpent of frigid adrenaline through Hazel, and with the addition of whom she now thought a hired gun, an accompanying dread. They were looking for someone, and she already knew it was Ari. It had to be Ari. Horror engulfed her as she linked the mercenary to the canine from the alley, and though it was a reminder, she was unable to turn and look again; her eyes flitted to the rooftops, tracing a line where she thought the red fox had been looking. The fact that he'd been studying them made her think that the bird had relocated to the urban canopy to avoid being seen. It wasn't unwonted of Ari to climb things in general, and empathizing with her, Hazel decided that it was unlikely she'd resorted to anything else to evade detection, particularly considering her doubt concerning the ship ports. With that, she quite instantly felt incredibly exposed. If they were looking for Ari, they were undoubtedly looking for Hazel whether they knew it or not, and if the mercenary in front of her—almost definitely the pilot of the starfighter—was working for Enzo, he would recognize her in a heartbeat.

"Possibly. Yes," the orange vulpine replied, jarring her from her thoughts and tacking the "yes" on as if an afterthought. His eyes finally drifted over to Hazel, and she ceased to breath, bracing for some igniting moment. However, as their gazes locked, for an ever-so-brief second she was astonished at the way her fears and anxieties dissipated. It was sickeningly easy to relax and forget her troubles even as he stared absently at her. As if in a theatrical display of its maudlin response to the exchange, a cool breeze, strange to the air now that the sun had risen, writhed between the buildings to playfully tousle Hazel's fur. Were she not entranced by the inappropriate comfort she was experiencing, she would have taken note of it and spited the observation.

His gaze had been fairly remote or otherwise indifferent when he'd spotted her, a fact which nearly suggested the idea that he wasn't threatening. However, the man then blinked once, and as if some esoteric knowledge had dawned on him, he parted his chops and paused, tilting his head a bit.

"Actually," he said with instant interest. Hazel's muscles nearly wound themselves into knots, limbs firming inherently, and she knew she'd given herself away by the shrewd flicker in his eyes. But there was no malice in them, and even though it appeared that he was calculating, his disposition still sang of integrity. His mouth parted again, but just as soon as it had opened, it snapped shut and his gaze was suddenly elsewhere, behind her.

His muscles had all but twitched before the maelstrom commenced, but Hazel was so foolishly bewitched and so immediately concerned by his attention that her reaction time was less impressive. The soldier beside her seemed to convulse and emitted a throaty half-grunt, half-cry as he released her and toppled to the ground, a hot wound abruptly present in his back. Instinct once again roared to life in her, and despite several dismayed cries and sudden shouts, she was grasped by the bizarre unison of resolute consciousness and adrenaline detonating like a gaseous bomb. Her fingers seized and curled, a tic of sorts that invariably took place before intuitive compulsion reigned over her senses. _Down_. She felt compelled, collapsing inward, but her late reaction had cost her dearly, and a terrible hiss of fire grazed her right inner thigh too quickly for even her to process. She lurched to that side before her body could hit the ground, the pain drowning the whisper of heat on her inner left leg, and fell onto the legs of the immobile soldier. The three men ahead of her blanched as the remainder of the blast sizzled on the hovercar's black plating, but the independent vulpine had already drawn his gun, body sweeping into some strange but natural-looking form.

The two soldiers beside Arden flanked their leader tightly, backing up as if they expected him to return to the car. But rather, a shadow fell over his expression and his ears flattened, an austere strain apparent in his posture. His jaw was clenched, and a very clear expression of not fear, not panic, not shock, but _annoyance_ contorted his otherwise handsome features. He huffed out a sigh whilst the sound of gunfire, beams and bullets alike, announced its presence.

The observation registered subliminally as Hazel achingly gripped her thigh above the new burn and tossed a glance backward. She saw a great deal of upturned, fearful faces as chaos ensued, screams ricocheting off of the buildings while the sea of bodies toiled to life as if a great gale had swept them up. Fire from what could only have been the proximate roofs razed the soldiers on the street, and in the back of her mind, the notion that Ari may or may not have been up there raced through Hazel's awareness. An agonized grunt escaped her as she tried to stand and her leg buckled a bit. The pain was terrible, and she marveled at the burn. It was ugly, the flesh charred and flayed at the edges and a bright, irritated red where it had been spared. The sight nearly shocked her, but the sensation of her mind shifting signaled an instant change, and she was on her feet within the second.

She couldn't tell from whom the shot had come, as the street was then alight with leaping fire that sent innocents to the ground as collateral damage. There was a bold sunlight on her now, the shadows waning, but no comfort was to be had. There were shouts to get down, to stay low, but no one listened, and that only served to inhibit the vixen. People rushed her in order to flee the area, and it might have been efficient cover were everyone not throwing her to and fro. Eventually, she resorted to stiffening and letting the pour souls who collided with her rebound. Her wound was further irritated in the tumult, but she was currently numb to it, moving as if her leg was whole. She swiveled around and headed in the direction of the military vehicles, only in time to witness the first be crumpled and spun about when two others harmoniously hit its front and back ends. Several unfortunate civilians were thrown like rags in the wreck, most falling lifeless and others barely mobile while they landed with their limbs and bodies contorted at unnatural angles. Her eyes only just caught sight of Arden as he clambered into a different vehicle a bit farther behind, the two guards suddenly hosting red handkerchiefs from their collars as they followed suit. It rocketed up into the air before the doors had closed, speeding off toward the menacing skyscrapers at the city's center.

Hazel grit her teeth and turned to eye the alley she'd originally arrived from. It already seemed as though it had been hours ago. She moved to the side of the road, intending to hug the building line until she figured out where she wanted to go. People were still running amok, but many were cowering against the stores, being ushered to safety by some of the remaining soldiers. Other troops, even those in thicker crowds of people, completely ignored the bystanders, focused only on their targets, and it was unclear to Hazel _what_ the targets were. There had been shooters from above, but other than the two canines from the alley, she hadn't noticed anyone suspicious on the street.

She'd nearly reached a clothing store with shattered windows when something sharp and needle-thin buried itself in her back, causing her to stumble in surprise. She snarled, vehemently reaching around to try and grab it while only knocking it painfully about as it stuck out of her flesh. As she finally grabbed a hold of it, she ripped it out impetuously, bringing it into sight. It was a sleek dart, and a familiar one at that, that she knew would have been fired from a gun; and it was ostentatious if anything, a taunt for her. A _dart_ , for God's sake. Animosity raged in her, threatening sense as she whipped around, but within the second she felt a heaviness in her shoulders. She impulsively lunged forward anyway, knowing quite well what had just been injected into her—as if to impishly challenge it.

Naturally, she had a quaint meeting with the densely packed dirt road.

Cursing loudly, she turned to her gaze to the store again as she jadedly propped herself up on her elbows. No one was technically occupying it, as the two soldiers that had stationed themselves behind the windowsill were now slumped over it and unmoving. Escape then seemed nearly unfathomable, even if the extra adrenaline kicked in again; the sedative would battle it nonstop, causing unpredictable crashes. She slammed the dart-like object down beneath her hand, gritting her teeth and trying her legs again. They felt weaker, and her mind felt muddled. It was more than a tranquilizer, she knew, and incredibly powerful, but there remained hope that she could scramble away from the chaos still. Something inside her roiled, and she found the strength to stand, but as soon as she did so, she caught sight of something moving toward her out of the corner of her right eye, from the opposite side of the street. Again, she felt as though a separate mind possessed her body, as she hadn't even comprehended her own movement until after she'd swept down and slammed into someone. They went down, something metallic skidding and clattering away as she landed half on top of what she barely registered as a reptilian man.

There was fire in her blood. Her body felt as though it were feverish, a symptom of her frenetic state, and she might've writhed for a moment had she not immersed herself into violent conflict. Below her, a cold, raptorial gleam entered the eyes of the lizard, a millisecond passing in which they simultaneously tensed to react. In her particular line of sight, she failed to notice that he had pulled a thin-barreled gun from his waist. He brought it up to her side while his right hand snaked around her neck and his fingers dug in painfully. Without thought, she lunged at his shoulder, clamping her teeth down on his left just at the edge of his collarbone as another needle embedded itself in her side. She grunted painfully, and he made a snarling cry, her left hand searching frantically for his where it dug into her neck. Finding it quickly, she managed to grip it long enough to squeeze his wrist and wait for the expected _crack_. She heard a repressed snarl as she did so, bones caving under the pressure of her grip just before she released his hand to make her escape. Her mouth left his shoulder, thick, lukewarm liquid pooling below her tongue as she knocked the gun in his hand aside and lunged away. She darted upwards, energy surging and her feet staggering in confusion as she attempted to subdue the heaviness that flared in her limbs.

Two sedatives. _Two_. Time was in its most precious state as she acknowledged her handicap, but every few great strides she took came with a flash of dead-weight malaise. She staggered every time, weak frustration begging her to finally let it loose. But she went on, blundering through the gunfire and agonized wails with desperation once again her guide. The sound of breaking glass exploded behind her as she passed by what might have been a restaurant, but she dared not look back, eyes fixated on the road ahead. Her body was as much a war zone as the streets, though she managed an impressive distance in her state, the last scurrying bystanders gone from her vision. All the rest were huddled behind carts and in stores, cowering in pathetic, curled balls, or listless entirely. Several soldiers were crouched behind a cart in front of her and to her left, two firing over and around it while a third lay behind them, listless. Their guns were pointed up, and as she ducked under the fire, earning a set of furious, urgent screams, she glanced up in the general direction that their guns were pointed.

They were firing at the rooftops—at their own men.

She almost released a disbelieving sigh, but in that small moment of distraction, something pierced the flesh on her leg. A third dart had managed to find the wound on her thigh, and right then she was suddenly aware of all her pain. The injury seared like her flesh was being cooked, and the added agent drained her yet more. She stumbled and fell, her wound consuming dirt as it scraped the packed road. Her fingers dug in ahead of her, losing tangibility as her vision blurred.

Seconds passed in which she tried and failed to regain herself, and all too soon footsteps crunched behind her. A hand violently snatched her by the hair and hauled her up, forcing her to twist and prevent the awkward position from hurting her back. Her body slid backward with a tug from the hand, and her own instinctively slapped down where she knew the wrist would be. Her chest felt hollow, Lylat's warmth settling in her fur alongside her sweat like mockery, and she glanced up at what could have been a pair of bright eyes or white teeth. The edges of her vision were going dark, and, not for the first time, her rage swelled.

She'd come so far.

Gotten so close.

Almost safe.

Almost free.

She wouldn't settle for that, she decided. Perhaps it was ignorant; but ignorance was all she truly knew. As if having a tantrum, she wildly swiveled on her hip and kicked absurdly, her foot meeting something of hard flesh and being followed by a snarl. The pressure in her hair roots disappeared, but she was going, going, going, and didn't even remember her head hitting the ground.


	5. The Hunting Party

_Chapter Three_

The Hunting Party

 _Corneria_

The room was dimly lit, dark walls basking where the blue glow kissed them and aching where it didn't. They sat next to one another to form an octagonal shape, an expansive quarter that had been indicatively decorated in a style that well suited the man to whom it belonged to. It was a fanciful getup, perhaps visionary, perhaps childish. There were no windows, as the room was underground, but seven of the walls were, in fact, screens of their own, which often were set to display the whispering green woodlands of one of Zoness' moons, Lothria. There was a living tree in every corner so that when the screens displayed, the corners were intangible and everything looked far the realer. In the thin stone floor, circles had been chiseled to make way for their roots and soil where there was not room below the surface, and the flora had grown so abundant with foliage that they now invariably left withered leaves and their eroded dust behind on the ever-cool flooring. The ceiling was naturally veiled by the trees, although where it peeked through it was an artificial sky that gradually faded between the colors of the night and was speckled with stars. Its entirety could act as a light source, or shift to the ether of daylight and clouds; but typically it was the night, complete with a heat barrier. It was not often used for lighting, and there were instead soft, round blue garden lamps situated near the eight trees, and which were devoid of their usual light. The blue glow instead originated from the back of the room, a hologram projected from a circular device that sat atop a beastly, gnarled desk that looked more tree trunk than surface.

A strapping jaguar leaned back in the contrasting, simple chair behind the desk. Before him sat a slowly rotating system map, several red beacons highlighted among Lylat's planets. They were familiar little places.

At the front of the room, the double doors—made from an incredibly dense, foreign stone and complete with effigies of some ancient event unknown to all who passed the threshold—swung inward soundlessly, without touch. The doors were meant to speak of age and portals, imposing the concept of an entirely different world on those who crossed through them; rather, most found them a tasteless mixture of automatic technology and theatrical, tawdry relics. Not that it was a bother.

Light filtered in from the hall, broken only by the outline of a tall canine. He stepped in far enough to allow the doors to silently swing shut behind him, moving with the grace of familiarity. He had been here many times before.

"Ah, Rama," the jaguar rumbled, his voice deep and melodic, like church bells swaying to a sweet tune. "I wondered when I would be seeing you today."

"I take it you'll assume why I'm here, then," the canine said flatly. He glided forward, a shock of white fur and eyes that were very much molten gold, rimmed by intimidating black lines. This specimen was a taller one, born lean but built burly, with nothing less than than immutable competence as his aura. He looked an ancient himself, with the tall, pointed ears of a deity and the body of both a wolf and a fox. He was overall a regal creature, much like the gods of old that donned gold rings and clasps, brass gauntlets and anklets and chains. His presence made a room small, and seeing as he was sitting across yet another powerful soul, to anyone else, this room would have been caving.

"Would it be insolent of me to believe you interested in this?" The jaguar gestured smoothly to the map in front of him. It was partially obstructing his face from Rama's perspective.

"Yes."

"Ah," the jaguar repeated. "Apologies."

The canine glanced about in slight vexation. "Where did the chairs go?"

The jaguar made an airy, nonsensical motion with his hand. "I had them removed. I'm replacing them with something more natural. I couldn't stand those spurious little mockeries."

Rama briefly mulled over the fact that he'd not ever heard anyone use the word _spurious_ in such casual context. "More trees?" he inferred dubiously.

"Yes, of course. I'm making up for the tragic lack of ecotourism."

The white canine suppressed an arid rebuke at the poor correlation. "Where did it come from?"

"Ecotourism? Or the trees?"

"The map."

"Mm." The feline's features had fallen from their sanguine structure. "A very good question. What little of the government that has chosen to acknowledge it theorizes that it came directly from Genov—Enzo himself," he corrected earnestly.

Rama's ears flitted in indifference to the slip. "That's a riot," he said humorlessly.

"I know."

He strode closer, eying the map from his vantage point at the edge of the desk. "These are Andross Oikonny's."

"Not quite," the jaguar said. "Andross used most of them, yes. He did not build them."

"You'll have to excuse me if I find that hard to believe." At the jaguar's quizzical stare, he explained, "They were built before the war. No one was monitoring him after his _exile_. Everyone liked to think that he was dead. Under those conditions he easily could have manifested these compounds."

"Rama," the jaguar warned. He said it in the way that a mother would as she waited for her son to hand her the candy stashed in his back pocket.

"This isn't ignorance. It's reason."

The jaguar sighed, stood—his height was superior to even that of Rama, along with his robust build, but the canine was quite used to it and remained unfazed. "I don't wish to incur the wraiths of your past, Rama, but I must remind you of who we are dealing with."

" _That_ is irrelevant, Enzo or not."

The jaguar sighed again. "Astor managed to get me partial files on the bases. They're unmistakably Enzo. This denial doesn't suit you, Rama."

 _This denial_. Rama seized that notion, belaboring his brain with sense and the reality before him. Denial was pitiful and inhibiting. "Then do tell what the purpose of these compounds was."

His colleague seemed satisfied with the response, and sat down accordingly. "Furthering his pursuit of a hybrid race, on the surface—and something for more depraved in depth. More particular. But," he continued, catching the glint of intent in Rama's eyes and the curl of his mouth, "he is not yet content with his work. Zoness and Aquas preclude the possibility of system perfection."

" _System perfection_ _?_ " Rama scoffed frigidly. "I was under the impression we were dealing with the living."

"Personally, I believe we are. But the extent of their awareness, and potential morality, is obscure," he admitted. "We know very little. Astor scraped up some very confidential information from the Fortuna base. Very _interesting_ information. And it was wiped from the mainframe, so the recovery was miraculous."

Rama mused that the combination of "Astor" and "miraculous" was beginning to become redundant. "Does any of it confirm your theories?"

"Quite possibly." He hesitated then. Something grim slithered through his eyes as he held Rama's gaze. "That is another thing...the reason I anticipated your arrival."

His expression was not its absent, cheery self, nor was it dark with knowledge; it was guarded, a pair of amber eyes flickering away from and back to Rama carefully as he leaned forward and tapped his desk top. It came alight, curved squares and lights and numbers and letters and geometric shapes covering the surface. It was a fantastical sight, the blue aura over the surface of what had once been a great tree. This man before him invariably birthed an atmosphere of harmonious technology and fantasy, often speaking cryptically and becoming aloof, as if his soul had stolen away on a celestial mission and left his body to shrewdly solve the puzzles of the universe. He valued nature, natural things, _living_ things, and yet the business he ran—his _public_ one—had risen to achieve such high popularity with its innovative and contemporary designs that even Space Dynamics had turned its eyes his way, despite the difference in products manufactured. He was the enigma that was Auberon Escobar, he was kingly, and he was a figure that loomed in the shadows of every great _thing_.

On the dash, a set of photographs appeared, depicting various scenes of destroyed ships, a woman in mid-stride, and the rather daintily discombobulated innards of a ship. Rama frowned.

"Should I feign impact?"

Auberon offered a wry glance. "Not yet. These were illegally delivered to me, for the record. I shouldn't have them. Hush."

Rama frowned deeper.

"Astor is good at his work," Auberon remarked offhandedly. "This is the most recent event before Fichina. I won't bore you with the details. The report indicates that two people were seen on Titania running from these soldiers—pilots—and that they managed to shoot one down. The other pilot disappeared, and almost all traces of wreckage were eviscerated—"

"I know this," Rama interjected, calmly raising a hand in protest. "I was briefed. Astor sent me these details this morning."

Auberon appeared to be pouting. "Well, you're just a great big killjoy. Now I'm unsure of where to begin."

"You were about to tactfully show me something evidently upsetting."

"...Yes," Auberon agreed solemnly. "That's right. About the missing persons." He fiddled with the screen before him, removing the first set of photographs. He pulled up a file, entered an abrupt password when the keyboard automatically popped up, and opened it. Three new files appeared in a triangular formation, each labeled below by a code: C121221, A042922, and H051722.

Rama turned his head so he needn't stare directly at the numbers. He feared their cluttered proximity would give him a headache if he tried to read them. Auberon tapped the file to the top right, A042922. The screen cleared, replacing the previous display with an array of racing lines and searing letters. An image sat adjacent to several sectioned boxes, all of which contained a majority of what Rama found to be technological jargon. At the top left, a title box announced in audacious caps, "SUBJECT NO. A042922."

Rama rounded the table to get a better look. His eyes fell squarely on the image, and his breath hitched silently. It captured a young vixen from the shoulders up, fur a violent vermilion and hair a gentle muss of curled tresses. The area around her eyes was but a shade paler, the very tips of her ears black, and her eyes were closed in tranquil unconsciousness. She appeared to be laying on her back, the photo taken directly above.

She was sickeningly familiar.

"I've been wondering. It's uncanny," Auberon murmured.

"Astor found these?" Rama worried a quiver in his voice, but it rang out clear as day. He'd long been accustomed to containing emotion; anyone in his line of work would be just as familiar with the practice.

"As per usual. Unfortunately—"

"He managed to retrieve _this_ ," Rama gestured grandly at the screen, "but not any signs of Enzo's activity?"

"Believe me, this was far more feasible than _that_ ," the jaguar responded slackly. "I was just going to say: the unfortunate thing is that these files are very...shallow. There is little information to them. No names, for example." He nodded at the woman from the image. "This barely grazes the surface. It tells me nothing, and yet so much. It appears to be a documented report from some sort of test or—lab experiment," he finished, the last bit sounding like sizzling ashes.

Hence the technological jargon. "And you've shown me this, why?"

He didn't want to know. Or perhaps he did. Perhaps it opened doors, provided hope, but it was a terrorizing idea to confront. Auberon zoomed in on the image. "Why do you think?"

For a moment, Rama was silent, quelling his irritation at the feline's circuitous mannerisms. Very quietly, eyes still focused on the image, he said, "Did she tell you? Or did you _investigate_?"

"Both."

"And what? What am I supposed to do with this information?"

Auberon frowned. "You said Astor briefed you."

"He did."

"And did he tell you all the details concerning the Titania incident? Did he include the sighting of a red vixen?"

"No, and neither did he include proof of it," Rama replied coolly. "I sincerely hope you aren't sending me to take care of any of this."

"Not quite. I've invested personally, made arrangements with the General of the Army. Consider me a third party."

The tomb of air in Rama's chest suddenly sprang to life. He half-groaned, half sighed. "Good God, Auberon."

Auberon grinned. "Come now. He's a good man."

Rama's eyes traveled the room, coming to rest on a patch of night sky visible above his head. So General Hare was a revered man; it didn't make a damned difference when you dabbled in such grandiose things like assassination and illegal weapons manufacturing. Larceny, as well, though as a technicality and often collateral. "Then what have you done?"

"Me? Very little. The General has called on the Star Fox squadron—his familiars. I'm simply their funding source. You can imagine that the Federation didn't much care to disburse their remaining resources on a threat that, for all intents and purposes, isn't even there!" He bellowed out a jolly laugh, as if it were an inside joke among friends.

Rama might have inquired why it was that the man was funding any sort of mission, particularly one which contracted a team that he found more akin to a Cornerian Aerospace Navy squadron than mercenaries, but he figured rather quickly that it was simply another form of reconnaissance. Auberon liked to have ears and eyes in all places, especially where Enzo Genovese was concerned. "What exactly are they doing? Pursuing whoever was involved in Titania?" Rama inquired.

"Yes. They're meant to retrieve the avian woman and, most likely, _her_ ," he replied, nodding again at the image of the vixen. "If the witness to the event gave an accurate description."

"And I'm your stand-in if things don't go as planned," Rama finished resolutely, chest tightening.

Auberon's expression turned grim once more. "Yes. I hear they're not well acquainted with failure, and I don't think that will truly be the result, but there are always complications. _When_ things go awry, I'll be resorting to you. I was avoiding calling directly on you so as to save you the trouble...and mitigate the shock value for your fiancée."

Rama fixed the other man with a look that brashly demanded, _Excuse me?_

"Assuming this is who we think it is. Who I think it is." Auberon seemed a bit fatigued by the challenge, but there was assurance in his voice, forcing the white canine to grudgingly acknowledge his own inclination to trust the man. It was abrasive, if anything, this sudden news being thrust upon him. But he couldn't ignore it, especially not where the woman he loved may be concerned.

Rama turned, leaning his hip against the desk and clenching his jaw. "So," he began slowly, "what else?"

Auberon grimaced. "Not much. I simply need you to be ready for whatever incidents come our way. The Star Fox team is allegedly en route to Papetoon as we speak, as that's where the Titania perpetrators are believed to have gone. Consider yourself on call. Unfortunately, I have great faith that things are going to get very ugly in the near future."

* * *

When Fox landed at Token City's naval port, he found himself subject both to petulant orders via the provincial troops on the ground and Falco's vindictive griping from his own intercom. It was a great deal to take in, and even more to withstand, particularly on his magnificent lack of sleep. And that was not even the most pressing thing; only minutes preceding his landing, he'd pulled his Arwing into steep arc, only for a flurry of movement in his peripheral vision to catch his eye. An adjustment to allow better vision barely allowed him the sight of a small figure, neutral in color, running along the roofs down below. It was narrowly followed by a larger, darker figure, and though his perspective was not the best suited for such observations, his eyes believed they had seen the scene of a chase. It lasted all of a bare second.

He'd circled back when he lost sight of them, but upon doing so, he found that they had vanished. After a few moments of scouting for belying movement, he relayed the finding to Falco, hoping that his later arrival may be adorned by further visual confirmation. He decided that the idea of the bird perusing the airspace was favorable to having him accompany Fox on-ground, anyway, and when he gave the order, his wing mate's griping ceased altogether. When he no longer found any signs of movement aside from the streets below, which appeared to crawl with teeming specks of people, he reluctantly made for the port despite his nagging desire to land and investigate.

After being verbally jostled across the strangely lifeless airfield, Fox came to approach Papetoon's Lieutenant General, an impassive-faced black vulpine with callous blue eyes and a rather lax posture. His eyes had been amidst a negligent scan about the area before Fox neared him, and by the time he'd paused in front of the officer, he'd only just appeared to register his arrival, despite the fact that he had expected him and it would have taken a deaf-blind man to _not_ see the Arwing's landing.

Oddly, Fox felt his awareness slip out from underneath him. Fog clouded his background thoughts as he scrutinized the man in front of him, inclination to formalities suddenly nonexistent. It took a sudden and discordant effort to greet him appropriately, and he felt that the spirit (or lack thereof) was mutual. The general, who introduced himself as Arden, was apathetic to the point of being rude, and quite clearly more than conscious of the fact. If military etiquette was measured on a spectrum, his would hardly have scraped the bare minimum. He brusquely trundled through typical courtesies, choosing to delve immediately into the situation at hand. It was perhaps the only thing that paused the downward spiral of Fox's mood.

"As you know," Arden started as he and two heavily-clad men directed Fox toward an enormous, armored SUV, "systems went down completely before we received any indication that the atmosphere had been penetrated. Considering our lackluster traffic regulation—" and at this he sneered, "—we had little else to rely on other than firsthand visual confirmation."

As they reached the hovercar, the driver emerged, a uniformed, unkempt grey vulpine with dark, laughing eyes. He held the door, and Arden paused, watching Fox expectantly.

"Where is it that we're off to?" Fox inquired.

"We've been tipped off about strange activity in a specific sector of the city. The details were sparse, but it's a start," Arden explained flatly.

Fox was unsatisfied with that answer, but he clambered in, followed by the three men behind him. The inside was unlike standard military vehicles—at least those on Corneria, Katina, and other outposts and facilities inhabited by the CDF and Cornerian Army—and had a spacious, chic design clearly intended to host senior officers and executives rather than armed personnel. A window separated the cabin from the front, where a third soldier sat in the passenger seat, politely acknowledging Fox with a nod and a "Sir" as Arden followed his men in as well. The driver closed the door behind them as Fox settled in the seat mirroring the driver, elbow brushing the armrest to his left. There was a monitor which appeared to boast just from its innovative face about a thousand different functions on it, and its screen greeted Fox with an amiable _Hello! How may I be of assistance?_

Though the opposite seat was large enough to host all three of the other men, one of the two guards sat on the other side of the armrest while the other took his place across from Fox. Arden lounged diagonally from him, arms spreading over the backs of the seats. He made a waving hand motion in Fox's general direction, which he assumed was meant for the driver, as it was heeded in the form of a whirring rumble from the car. As they began to move, Arden frowned for no immediate reason, scrutinizing Fox. At the younger man's inquiring stare, he said, "I was led to believe that you would not be alone."

"The majority of my team is on reserve until they're needed," Fox replied. "I hope you don't mind—I've got a man patrolling the area for other signs of activity at the moment." Truthfully, he decided that he didn't really care, and he doubted there would be much of a fuss over Falco's presence in the skies as it was, but unlike Arden, Fox didn't completely ignore common courtesy.

Arden looked decidedly interested. The faint, but sure, spark in his eyes made Fox tense slightly. "No company from the Federation?"

His mind howled for caution. "They've trusted us with the job. It would be a nuisance to send forces here, at this time, over something this minuscule."

There was a smug smile creeping at the edges of Arden's chops. "None of this strikes me as minuscule. Nevertheless, I can imagine that our friends in high places must shy from situations such as this one. It's a great deal of trouble to expend resources these days." He said it whimsically, ostensibly nonchalant, and Fox decided that the other man was intent on pissing him off. _Our friends in high places_.

"I don't suppose you have anything of use to offer me," Fox responded calmly, though the retort was evident. For additional venom, he added, "Information wise, that is."

Arden seemed, once again, wholly uninterested. "Hardly more than what you already know. As I was saying before, systems inconveniently went down. Not a power outage, but all of our facilities on this side of the planet suffered through a cacophony of signal interruptions and technical failures. Nothing was working properly. And there seems to have been no damage or other signs of corruption to equipment or servers. Everything, for once, was working pristinely. And then it wasn't," he explained simply.

"Any specifics to how and when you found the carrier?" Fox inquired. He briefly glanced out the window when movement flickered, and he saw that several military-issue vehicles were filing out of a gated enclosure and falling into line behind them. The car slowed to a stop, though they hadn't left the base.

"Intelligence down south happened to catch sight of both it and the cargo transport. They managed to get a message through to us. Since their arrival coincided with our little system meltdown, we sent scouts out, followed it. Any equipment disconnected from our servers worked well enough, but the carrier was concealing its beacon, and it seemed to allegedly take a detour, which is how we lost it." Before Fox could comment on the word "detour", Arden added, "And it was following the same path as the cargo ship. So we were unprepared to deal with it changing direction."

"The cargo hold was also quite a bit slower—likely because it was, apparently, fuming, and potentially tattered. About ten, fifteen minutes after the cruiser was lost, systems went back up and we found that it had recently landed nearby."

"You didn't inspect the scene of impact?" Fox queried, with a slight undertone of snide accusation, though he clamped down on it the moment it slipped out.

"We were a bit more occupied with where its occupants might have gone. Aside from that, our people have been... _uneasy_ lately. They might've reacted hysterically to our men going out to investigate a crash landing where foreign or illegal individuals may be involved. You can imagine the public here conjures an assortment of stories for anything particularly abnormal. Which is why we hesitated to act. Well—my superiors hesitated. I wouldn't much _care_ if an ignorant populace suspected terrorism and other such fantasies."

Fox nearly snorted. No matter how many precedents were set by acts of ignorance, fear, and intolerance, they were still commonly recycled methods of conduct.

The car started to move again, and a flippant glance over his shoulder and through the window displayed the new extension of vehicles in front of them. What might have been a police car sat aside, likely meant to take up the back. There was probably one in front, as well, and its sirens would be wailing very soon. "And yet we're amidst a parade of military-issue, armored vehicles, escorted by local police?"

" _Now_ , of course," Arden retorted, giving Fox a brief moment of satisfaction. "With you involved, your employer being the Cornerian military, precautions are necessary, even if they are attention-gathering."

"And why is it that your people have been _uneasy_?"

Arden sighed. "Conspiracy is like a virus. The paranoid whisper their fears into the ears of their cohorts, and alas, rumors are born."

He didn't elaborate further, and while Fox was instantly curious and found the information oddly _coincidental_ , he didn't push it. He archived it in the back of his mind, focused on the task at hand. "No sign of the cruiser still?"

"None." Arden's eyes glittered as the recently emerged sun lit up the interior of the car. The sirens began to scream.

"Then what about our destination?" Fox asked insatiably, breaching his desired subject. "You said strange activity?"

"As I said, details are sparse."

"You had to have received something for it to be worth investing in," Fox drilled. "What kind of 'activity'?"

Arden waved a hand apathetically. "Simply that. Activity. Someone was reported to have been acting oddly, you just arrived, we're essentially a search party...It seems only fitting to investigate."

Investigation was an incredibly loose word to use; clearly, it was an understatement if _strange activity_ called for a plethora of armed men in monstrous military vehicles brazenly announcing their presence. He wondered if Arden had said a single truthful thing thus far, and what information he may be choosing to omit. "Then surely you received word of what this 'someone' looked like?"

"Unfortunately," Arden replied cryptically, "not." He paused, seeming to ponder it in an unwonted display of interest. "I suppose it wouldn't be necessarily _helpful_ ," (Fox failed to see how it wouldn't be helpful, where genetically engineered hybrids were concerned or not), "since my memory serves me poorly at the moment. I don't remember whether any defining characteristics concerning the occupants of the cargo ship were offered, or if perhaps they were lost in the relay of information."

Fox narrowed his eyes. He had the sudden suspicion that he was not the only person looking for these people, aside from the carrier that was surely nearby. Arden's statement sounded quite a bit less innocent and far more akin to _You'll remind me of what I'm looking for, won't you?_

"One is avian, the other probably vulpine. Specifics weren't given, as there was only one source." A lie, if a meager one.

Arden scoffed. " _Vulpine?_ Oh, well that _is_ helpful. I've got an entire entrée to pick from."

The word _entrée_ echoed abrasively in Fox's ears. It was as if Arden could be feasibly comfortable at the head of a table which heralded cannibalistic dishes. "Red vulpine," he added wryly. He could have disclosed the allegation that they had possessed some unnatural grace and whatnot, but it was a ridiculous thing to say aloud, and more importantly, he was positive that he no longer wished to see the engrossed gleam in Arden's eyes.

The man snorted. "My favorite."

He said it sardonically, but disgust still pivoted in Fox's stomach. He remained silent, choosing to peer out the window and upward. He'd noticed they were skirting the inner city, and therefore any building taller than four stories, which made it a much easier task to inspect the rooftops. To his gratification, honking sounded nearby, and the car suddenly ascended considerably, giving him a slightly better view. He cast a furtive glance back toward the left window, which Arden stared vacuously out of, and upon seeing nothing interesting, returned his gaze to his side.

"Fox."

Instinctively, he glanced at Arden, who still listlessly watched the buildings and streets go by. He pulled his mic piece from his headset, recognizing Falco's voice. Finger pressed to the transmitter, he responded, "What is it?"

His askance, abrupt in the quiet, drew all eyes his way. He chose to stare between the heads of Arden and his guard. "Found something," Falco went on grimly, "but you're not gonna like it."

Fox bowed his head, leaning forward with one elbow propped on his knee while his opposite hand held the transmitter. His heart thrummed in anticipation. "Can't be picky," he replied flatly, the phrase open and hanging to segue Falco's response.

"We've definitely got company. I just circled fuckin' _Powalski_. He's set up on one of the rooftops, about six miles in from the southern edge and four from the eastern one—you in that fucking _parade_ down there?"

Fox resisted the urge to glance out the window. "Yes."

"Shit. You're close. I've got him on the move now—he just disappeared inside. Blue building, east side."

Tension grasped him. What sour luck that Star Wolf would be involved. With a start, Fox realized that he was afraid. Not of the rival squadron, or the conflict that was sure to arise, but afraid of being disappointed. If Leon was here, Wolf probably was, and even if the latter wasn't, his wing mate _would_ be on his orders. The last time he'd seen Wolf, his fighter had banked into a potent turn and seized the attention of hundreds of insect-like automatons. Ruefully, Fox reflected on the fact that though his hatred for Wolf had admittedly faded, it was unlikely that they wouldn't come across each other again in their respective lines of work, and that it was even less likely that they would be on the same side.

He grappled for his focus. No time for solemn musings now. He clenched his jaw, glancing back to Arden. He was smiling coldly. "Have we a situation?" he asked sarcastically.

"If you don't give me anything, I'm gonna land on the damn roof and follow him myself. Hell, at least I'd be _doing_ something," Falco barked. Arden's ears flicked, the avian's voice loud enough to be heard as a tinny, garbled shout in the cabin.

The car stopped.

Arden's cunning eyes, watching Fox assiduously for the slightest indication of what was transpiring between the bird and himself, birthed a resilient determination in him. With a calm he didn't feel, he stared directly into Arden's eyes as he replied, "Take care of it. And keep me updated."

The silence on the other end betrayed Falco's surprise, and Arden regarded him coolly. Shouting could be heard outside, doors slamming and sirens caterwauling. "Technical difficulty," Fox lied, addressing the man. The jab was thinly veiled.

Arden's expression was arid, and he held Fox's gaze. "That's unfortunate," he remarked curtly. Their fleeting silence was magnificently unfit for the situation, and the other man was the first to break it, brusquely sidling in front of his guard and Fox with a ducked head before throwing the door open and stepping out. His men followed him, leaving Fox in the cabin, stiff with anxiety. He stood, stepping out, only to be interrupted by a light "Sir?"

Fox paused, left foot hanging over the sidestep while his right hand gripped the roof handle. He turned his head, noticing that the window separating the driver and the cabin had dropped. The grey vulpine had swiveled in his seat, holding the side to secure himself. His passenger had just shut the door behind him. He suddenly seemed to Fox a very young man, eyes bright with mirth and fur riled with intractable ingenuity. "I wasn't listening, but by the look on your face, it wasn't a pleasant ride," the man remarked.

Fox raised an eyebrow despite his tense state.

The other man laughed. "Well, sorry about that. He takes some getting used to."

He managed a dry smirk. "I'm sure." He finished his prolonged step, gazing about his surroundings. He was at the head of a street so crowded with people that everyone was all but assembled atop one another, all sitting and being directed by the soldiers that had spilled from the convoy. There was great unrest, many cowering from the soldiers while those about them angrily gesticulated and complained. The buildings, though ramshackle and a bit poorly kept, had lively designs within their windows, welcoming customers with signs that said, _Yes, we're open!_ and earnestly claimed, _Buy one, get one FREE on the ENTIRE store!_ Doors fell open and troops trickled in and around them, guns raised and voices loud.

His eyes didn't linger.

They shot to the roofs immediately, his hand partial to the blaster against his leg. He scanned them warily, chest finally pulling taut. There was a blue building not twenty meters away. It loomed despite its unremarkable size, appearing to be almost lopsided and adorned with what had once been white trim and now was a mottled grey. Fox's eyes flickered from it to Arden, who had his back bravely turned to him and was subjecting the crowd to his pretentious, trademark glower. They snaked back to the edifice, his eyes sharply tuned in to its roof. Powalski wouldn't still be there, but it was as if the building was in perpetual shadow; it literally was, the sun grazing the majority of the left-hand side of the street while the right sat in forgiving shade. He was standing just outside of it, remembering the way the sun and, oftentimes, Solar, had a way of burning through one's fur even when the air was sweetly cool.

He continued to agonize over what he couldn't see, above him, particularly seeing as Falco's fighter had yet to grace his vision. He must've had an immediately opportune chance to land, or Fox surely would have caught sight of him. Prattle jabbered like a swarm of bees about his head, one voice a bit louder and nearer to him than the others. Arden's voice drew only his ears, and a second voice replied. He drowned it out, eyebrows cinching together as his gaze dropped to the upper windows of the buildings. He half-expected to see the sliver of a green figure, or, perhaps worse, a grey one.

"You said avian, yes?"

It took a moment. Blinking, Fox slowly dropped his gaze, meeting Arden's. He was clearly bored. Tersely, he answered, "Possibly." A full second later, at the dark-furred vulpine's inquiring look, he decidedly added, "Yes." At his angle, Arden appeared to be standing in front of a pair of canines; one, a soldier, brassy red fur visible through his visor, and the other small by comparison, distinctly feminine with far deeper, truer scarlet fur. Her hair was a bit of a mess, all but the wandering front tresses of her hair slovenly held back by what could have been a sloppy braid. Her clothing was completely dark and more or less concealing, other than the way her pants hugged her legs. She was regarding Fox warily, eyes some deep shade of blue or grey or brown, and if her appearance didn't announce her peculiar presence, her demeanor did. She was afraid of him. Afraid of _Fox_.

A breeze managed to slither down into the street. Fox blinked, an immediate alarm and sophisticated excitement pulsing in his veins. "Actually," he started, Arden's piqued interest evident in his raised brows. The woman tensed, eyes wincing so minimally that he almost missed it. He instantly felt bizarrely confident in thinking that she was the second Titania suspect, baffled by his own largely unwarranted certainty. Words bubbled up his throat, but then there was... _something_. A flash. A shadow—a flicker of movement. His mouth inherently shut, and his eyes flitted behind her, back to where a squarely built lupine suddenly towered above the crowd. An armed troop, gun in hand, stood within five feet of him, impassively spectating as the man raised a tell-tale blaster with a bayonet on its end and directed it toward the soldier holding the vulpine woman. As everything registered, the grey fur and the large frame and the threatening point on the end of the canine's gun, the unperturbed soldier's eyes slid over as well, as if to watch. Civilians in the immediate area recoiled and began the descent into chaos, lunging and scrambling away. He did nothing.

Fox moved, late. The shot grounded the soldier holding the woman. Almost immediately, she stiffened, then attempted, not without grace, to dive down. A second shot mercilessly skimmed her leg before she could, causing her to lurch sideways and tumble down. The remainder found its way a few feet aside Fox and collided with the hovercar in a spectacular sizzle. He had already swept his blaster up and readied it to fire, but pandemonium was alive with screeching spirit. Shrill squeals and hoarse cries went up with their owners, the roiling river even masking the eminent presence of Wolf O'Donnell.

Arden was motionless, though his men had closed in. People shot past, his guards taking the brunt of their panicked flailing, and Fox bent his knees and dropped the barrel of his gun downward. His eyes tried to focus on the area where the vixen had last been, but he was being jarred and jostled, making it impossible. With a start, he narrowly avoided an imminent collision with a body that collapsed mid-step, a hole burned into the side of their neck. People ducked and fell, eyes rocketing up and back down while they raised their arms and hands defensively. He raised his gun again, and to his relief, he noticed a considerable decrease in the amount of people that rushed him. He was focused, prepared, _alive_.

He leaped aside in response to a blast that had baked the ground next to his foot, knocking several others aside. His eyes wandered up, and he noticed that several soldiers—Arden's men—had accumulated on the roofs. He contemptuously took note of the trained gun on him, swinging his blaster up and releasing a merciless shot on his attacker. The soldier, who had been situated behind a sniper rifle, slumped when it seared through his head. Fox disposed of a second one next to him after ensuring that they had really been shooting at their own men down below. It quickly became apparent that Papetoon's forces were divided, half firing deliberately at their former comrades while the latter struggled to make sense of things. Fox made for the building line, skidding behind a vendor's cart on his left side. From where he crouched, he was allowed a horrendous view of the car he'd just been in, still inhabited by the driver, being pulverized as two vehicles from the convoy rammed the front and back on opposite sides, completely spinning it around. Moments later, a second one erupted from the chaos, speeding away as several others ascended from the nearby streets to escort it.

"Son of a bitch," Fox snarled, picturing Arden's cold smile. His veins were alight, and yet he was consumed by disbelief. The area around him was a ludicrous sight, an uproar of guns and fear that seemed to have spontaneously erupt from nothing at all. Gritting his teeth, he swung around the other side of the cart, barely in time to blast a soldier that had backed onto the sidewalk and swiveled to turn his gun on him. He'd seen the flat gleam in the man's eye, known he was an enemy, but it still brought him unnerving displeasure to watch him fall back, lifeless. It was very near futile to try and discern who was friendly and who was not, and Fox was sickeningly aware that at this rate he was bound to incidentally kill at _least_ a few of Papetoon's good men.

" _Fox!_ You alive?" Falco shouted, voice ricocheting about his ears. Fox slunk back a bit, hitting his transmitter button.

"Barely," he grunted. He released it briefly to take care of another sniper on the rooftops. It seemed, at least, that _they_ were all foes. "You on the ground?"

"Yeah. _Shit._ I see you—"

A blast seared through the air from a nearby building, either from the roof or upper floors, and disappeared behind the cart with an accompanying cry of pain. "Got him," Falco boasted. "You owe me."

Fox made note of his blind spot and adjusted. "Wolf's here," he growled. The crowds had thinned out, but people were still curled up against stores and carts, balling up on the ground while the stragglers disappeared into nearby shops or made for the alleys, which were a poor choice. Just as many lay lifeless. "And it looks like there was a coup."

"Yeah. Lost that son of a—"

There was another pause, and Fox took the opportunity to take out two more snipers above him. They seemed to fill in for one another, an endless supply of killers. "Falco," he called worriedly, the joint of his index finger smarting with the pressure from the transmitter.

"Damn it—Powalski's at your ten! Damn—"

Fox lurched, craning his head as Falco's voice cut off. Sure enough, he caught sight of the reptile moving a good ten meters to his left and ahead, near the blue building. He simultaneously recognized the recovering form of the red vixen as she stood nearby, causing him to clench his blaster tightly; before he could act, she turned and, with terrible deftness, collided with Powalski. Upon impact, her weight held more sway, and they fell, grappling with one another and wearing matching snarls. There was little Fox could do at his current distance, as he was concerned that interference would affect the woman; he was surprised that she was still so forcefully mobile, consequently assuming that Wolf's shot hadn't been as severe as it had seemed.

The soldiers remaining on the ground were either tucked away around the doors and below the windows of the surrounding buildings, or behind other vendor's carts, and they were too busy with each other to bother with the pair wrestling on the ground at the edge of the road. Fox watched Powalski raise what looked to be a dart gun to the vixen's side, and her body puckered at the abrupt action. He realized that where her head was bowed, she had _bitten_ him, and her hand was tightly locked around his wrist. Just as quickly, he emitted a pained grunt, and she haphazardly released him, flinging herself up and careening down the street with agility incongruous with the state her body was in. Powalski attempted to recover, cringing as he favored his left shoulder whilst trying to grab a hold of the dart gun with that hand. As he raised it, expression contorted with pain but arm steady, Fox fired, knocking the gun from his hand and likely rendering it useless. He pitched forward, sprinting down the sidewalk as quickly as possible, keeping the woman within sight. She was fast, clearly fit, but he noticed the way she seemed to falter in her strides, sporadically slowing for no apparent reason. The contents of the dart acting, perhaps, or even her injury ailing her. She ran in the middle of the street, uncaring of the gunfire being exchanged. It put Fox at a considerable disadvantage, having to worry about who was shooting at him and where they were shooting _from_. It appeared that she wasn't concerned with any of that, and Fox's immediate, unsophisticated reasoning was that she was the purpose of the entire thing and that it was probably a bad idea for _anyone_ to shoot her. The Papateen soldiers would avoid injuring civilians, and their traitorous comrades would know better than to kill their prize.

Fire sizzled at Fox's feet, nearly causing him to stumble as he nimbly slid sideways, steps stuttering to regain balance. It continued, hissing warnings around each step until he took cover behind another conveniently placed cart. He nudged out, eyes fixing on his assailant.

Wolf.

The lupine fired again as he peered around the edge, forcing him to recede—and kept going. Fox made to fire, but he was suddenly rained upon by charred wood as hot flashes roared around him, pushing him down. He bitterly watched the Star Wolf leader go by, clearly in pursuit of the vixen. Fox only just realized that the man had been concealing his gear with a loose mantle when he saw that he'd doffed it, and noticed the same dart gun at his hip that Powalski had been utilizing.

Miscellaneous scrap poured over him, allowing not the slightest moment of retaliation. Every few seconds there would be a brief pause, and though he knew it was bait, he had to attempt to make use of it. Still, he found himself perpetually lodged, shots nearly grazing him when he tried to fire back. He was amidst agonizing over what to do when a roaring noise burned into existence, rapidly heightening with each passing second. Upon looking up, Fox saw a familiar fighter headed toward him. It fired at the rooftops, sending debris everywhere in bouts, successfully halting the reign on him and his ever-faithful produce cart.

"HECK YEAH!" Slippy shouted. Expending an ounce of breath on a grateful, brusque laugh, Fox shot to his feet again, in hot pursuit of Wolf and unconcerned with what had prompted his team mate's arrival. Falco's belligerent yelling, no doubt, perhaps the sound of gunfire in the background.

After a few moments of running below Lylat's warm rays, which scathed him with heat that contradicted the wind, he saw the definite form of Wolf's back, and he slowed to raise his gun. However, he faltered, mind reeling. He was perfectly aware of what he _should_ have done in that moment, but he didn't commit. He directed the discharge at Wolf's feet, careful to avoid the motionless red and black bundle on the ground when he noticed it. It merely prompted the man into action, causing him to lift the body of the listless vixen over his shoulder and bolt once more. Fox doggedly followed, berating himself while lengthening his stride again to keep up. He continued to fire these harmless shots, eventually attempting to actually hit the man's feet when sense finally kicked in.

Wolf abruptly veered off into an alley. Fox sped up, panting ardently in hopes of catching him in close quarters. By the time he skidded around the corner, Wolf was just approaching the opposite, and Fox's shot nicked it as he disappeared. How he managed to keep that speed while carrying the woman on his shoulder, he'd no idea, but they went on like this for what seemed a galling eternity, the streets narrowing and turning to crumbling apartments and forlorn houses. There was no one to witness it, the entire area apparently abandoned. To Fox's immense annoyance, Wolf continued to veer erratically through short-length alleys and side streets, a feat that was both effective and aggravating to the vulpine behind him, who, despite his prime age and lack of any physical burden, found it difficult to endure. He had to holster his blaster intermittently to keep up.

A voice breathlessly sounded from his com, nearly causing him to stutter. "Fox," Krystal greeted urgently, "Slippy and I just arrived. Are you alright?"

Wolf had gained a bit of distance, and the sudden notion that Krystal had, alongside Slippy, come to his aid hit him. He couldn't spare a breath to answer her, and the sound of his feet scraping the arid dirt roads and paths made it a bit more difficult to hear. Wolf made a wide turn into a pocket between fences, which Fox hadn't noticed, making his sudden absence disconcerting. As he banked to follow, his eyes narrowed on an aperture which, beyond Wolf's silhouette, looked particularly barren of houses. An outdated chain fence rose on either side of the wooden isle that Fox had just entered, backing up to the yards of various homes and split by the gap ahead.

"Oh man," Slippy said. "I found the carrier."

Wolf bustled through it and seemed to descend, as if on a hill, and as he neared the space that signaled the city's edge, Fox saw the spacecraft as well. It was not terribly large, certainly not the size that the _Great Fox_ had been, but a carrier nonetheless, and it was plainly in the process of landing. The terrain turned volatile beneath Fox's feet, demanding his attention, but it seemed to slow Wolf down even a bit more. It leveled out considerably before he could make much use of it, though, and he found himself lagging even as dread clamped down on him. Ahead of him, Wolf had dawdled to a halt, half-turning back to eye him coolly. Resentment boiled in Fox, battled vehemently by the hope he told himself to ignore.

He drew his blaster once more, but the shots he discharged were pointless, and the ship's guns looked to be trained on him. He glanced about, finding a suitable niche in the ground just before the yawning blast of the ship's cannons ailed him.

He wedged himself against the outcropping until it stopped, and when he cautiously climbed back out, Wolf was at the top of the ramp that had been lowered down, which was now returning to its proper place. His back was facing him. The carrier began its ascent, and with an agitated grunt, Fox glowered at it, panting fervently and slackly holstering his blaster.

"Crap—Fox, that cruiser's taking off!" Slippy exclaimed. The sound of his voice was grounding, and Fox wondered how long he'd been talking.

"Should we intercept it?" Krystal asked tightly.

Life—true, conscious life—flooded Fox's body once again. " _No_. Let it go."

"Let it go?" Slippy echoed incredulously.

"Fox...?" Krystal prompted softly.

Fox put a hand to the back of his head and crouched, watching the ship disappear. "It's too risky. We don't have Cornerian forces at our backs, and we don't know what it's capable of. See if ROB can track it, Slippy."

"Got it," Slippy said, tersely.

"Krystal, what's going on back in the city? Heard from Falco?" Fox asked, swiveling around to inspect the metropolis. Smoke was drifting upward in a meek cloud farther in.

"As much as you have," Krystal responded with slight concern. "And it looks like someone managed to hail help. The scene's largely under control now. It's crawling with new men, accompanied by police."

"Well, we took care of the snipers," Slippy added proudly. "That helped."

Fox nodded, despite his isolation. "Everybody's alright?"

Simultaneously, a fourth voice asked, "Anybody dead?"

Fox's ears flattened at Falco's crude revival, and there was a recess in which the relief experienced by each com user was palpable to the next. He turned back to eye the faint speck in the sky that was the carrier, his virulent mood considerably quelled by the sound of Krystal's gentle sigh. "Not yet," he replied, following the shape ruefully until it was no longer visible.

"Great," the bird replied sarcastically. "Because I've got an unconscious mutant here with me, and I'm not about to carry her."

* * *

 **A/N:** Not so happy with this chapter, but oh well.


End file.
